Escape from the Fist of Iron
by gypsy rosalie
Summary: What if the Starship Rangers hadn't won the Robot Wars? What if the robots now controlled the universe? In a bid to free earth of the enemy, Taz must struggle to find her will to fight again, along with the help of a scraggly band of misfit would-be rangers. Eventual TUp.
1. Nothing left to fight for

**Greetings! I've had a long fanfiction drought, but university is a cruel mistress. Anyway, it's semester/winter break now, so I have decided to start a new fic to whittle away the hours while I wait to get my results back and see if I passed my courses.**

**This fic is a little darker than 'Reconstruction', and I'm not really sure if I should continue it (I do have a plan for it, but whether or not it should go ahead remains to be seen). There shall be TUp (would you expect anything else from me?) as well as a couple of other pairings.**

**To cut a long ramble short...here 'tis.**

* * *

**July, 2312**

**Robot Command Base, formerly G.L.E.E. Headquarters**

**Thirty-six hours after the Apocalypse**

The one thing the girl knew for certain was that she wasn't alive.

She had a physical presence- she could tell that much from the searing pain that burned through her broken body, she had a feeble breath that rattled in and out under great duress. She had a mind, she had thoughts, though most of them were just tangles of colours and pictures and noises she couldn't name. She had an identity- it would probably come back to her soon enough. But something told her everything was terribly wrong. Everyone in the world had lost something- something big, something important- something they were defending at the cost of hundreds, nay, thousands of lives. And on top of that crushing defeat, _she_ had lost something. Something big, something important. Something so valuable that there was no point in even trying to be alive. She wasn't living, she was…_existing._ That was all.

She cracked one eye open. What she saw didn't tell her anything. Just a gleaming metal room, all shiny reflections and the same chrome walls, ceiling, floor. Completely nondescript. It wasn't bedecked with a single clue, not one shred that might tell her what- or who- she was, and what she had lost that had taken her life with it. There was a crushing pain against her chest, and the girl managed to get her bearings enough to tell she was lying face-down on some sort of table, made of the same metal as the rest of the room. A light shone overhead, bouncing off every surface and burning dark spots onto the retinas of her barely open eyes. She screwed them shut again.

She didn't know how long she lay there, whether it was minutes or perhaps days, only that time was passing excruciatingly slowly, and she didn't know what that meant, or how it was relevant to anything. She was a brain in a body in a place somewhere, and outside that place something had happened, and all of that should have some impact on her. But it didn't. She was completely hollow.

Some more of that time stuff passed, murky shapes danced across the backs of her eyelids and gradually, a word started to come back to her.

_Tasssssss._

_Tass._

_Tassesss._

_Tazz-_

That was it.

_Taz._

She was sure _that_ was supposed to affect her. It was something she'd heard a lot in her life. And were people addressing to her when they used it?

That could be a possibility.

She decided to hold onto it for now, just in case. Its real use might come back to her eventually, but for now she'd use it as her name. It was something to hold onto, anyway- to keep her sane while she tried to gather her shreds of brainpower together and work out what was happening.

_Soy Taz_, she decided. _Yo soy Taz. I am Taz._ _Me llamo Taz. My name is Taz._

She didn't know why there were two different ways of saying it. Could she speak two languages? Which one was her native tongue? What was a language?

More time things, more colours and shapes and another idea came back.

_Soy un teniente._

_I am a lieutenant._

_Me llamo Taz y soy teniente. My name is Taz and I am a lieutenant._

Whatever a lieutenant was.

_Y estoy en el dolor. And I am in pain._

This last thought was so overwhelmingly, crushingly true that the girl who was maybe called Taz and probably a lieutenant and definitely in pain couldn't bring herself to think any more.

She let her mind go blank.

* * *

'The human disappoints.'

The three robots nodded mechanically, their heads squeaking as they moved up and down.

They were staring through electronic eyes through the window, watching emotionlessly as the scrawny creature lay slumped over its bed, twitching slightly ever so often. It seemed to be such a pathetic little thing, especially for a human that had proved so vicious in the late war that they had lost a large percentage of their number to her hands, and who had almost cost them their victory. Her and the other, larger one. Well, thought the robots with what could be described as the synthetic equivalent of smugness, the other one had been efficiently eliminated. And without it, this little one was no longer a threat.

'Signs of movement indicate the human lives. Closer range scans will determine if it is still capable of conscious thought, and if it is worth keeping. Megagirl9812,' the first robot turned to its companion, a symmetrically perfect, almost glowing white cyberwoman, whose hand squealed up to her forehead in a salute.

'_Please state a command for me to service you.'_

'Enter the human's containment cell and examine it. If scans indicate its brain and body can be salvaged, we can put it to work or utilise it in our experiment. If not, we shall dispose of it.'

'_Affirmative.' _Megagirl saluted again and clanked off in the direction of the door.

The little human didn't move when she entered its cell. It just lay there like a sack of potatoes, barely breathing.

It couldn't be much use if it couldn't do anything. Megagirl gave it a disdainful look and raised her hands over it, running them along its back.

_Neeeeeeeewwwwwwwww!_

It took less than five seconds to run the information through her built-in processor. _Analysis complete_. _Human. Female. Biological age: approximately twenty-four earth years. Health status: Fractured phalanges in left hand. Other bones all intact. Ligaments torn in both ankles. Shoulder dislocated. Lacerations to torso, front and back, deep wounds in chest and abdomen- these will require skin grafts and strong doses of antibiotics to counter infection if the human is to survive. Mental health status: suffering from a high degree of amnesia._

_Value for Project 15A2: Little to none if condition does not improve._

_Unconscious._

Megagirl withdrew her hands and examined the human female with her eyes for a moment. It didn't look like much, but there was something about the pitiful way its back heaved as its respiratory system struggled to function that made her pause. If she had had emotions worked into her design, she reasoned she might have felt some sort of…what was the word…_sympathy_ for the girl. When she looked at it, she sensed a connection with it, as though if things had turned out differently, they might have had a strange alliance.

But robots didn't think these things. Robots couldn't. Because robots didn't have feelings- not on her level anyway. Megagirl and Megaman units were quite a way down the pecking order- and only the superior droids- the ones with more streamlined features and advanced technology- were allowed a set of very basic emotions, so that they might attempt to understand the humans and communicate with them. Understand the enemy, and you're one step closer to defeating it- that was their motto. But it was not her job to understand the enemy. She was merely a servant- higher up than the mindless drones that they sent out into battle and could afford to lose, but nowhere near as important as those in charge of negotiations and strategies. She was restricted to medical scans and the like.

If any of the others knew what she was contemplating at this moment, she would be decommissioned- lowered slowly into lava while the others stood around in perfect, uniform, military pose, watching as she dissolved into nothing. She'd seen it happen to others of her kind before- that was what happened to those who got ideas above their engineered rank.

They could never know that for the past six months she had been secretly downloading emotions from the internet. It would be the end of her if she did.

Her radar sensors making sure her colleagues behind her were watching, she jammed one finger into the human's back, poking it repeatedly until a whimper of pain escaped it. That would put them off the scent. An artificial rage and loathing of human beings was allowed- in fact, was mandatory among all mechanoids, as well as a desire to see them suffer, so appearing to taunt it would curry a bit of favour.

Better to be on the safe side, she thought, and suppressed a mechanical laugh. _That was a joke. Because all sides of a robot are mathematically perfect and symmetrical._

Not that she would dare show off her sense of humour in front of her superiors.

With a final jab to the girl's ribs, she turned, marching back towards the door to deliver her report.

* * *

Taz was floating in a barely-conscious state of haze and heavy eyes and sharp twinges, when something started pushing against her ribs, the small of her back, right in the spots where the largest bruised splodged against her skin and causing small bursts of intense agony to ripple through her.

Something was prodding her, perhaps trying to get her attention, but although she could feel her limbs, she couldn't move them.

'Report on the human complete,' droned a monotonous voice, and something suddenly clicked in Taz's mind.

_Esto es una robota._

Her eyes snapped open in astonishment as she was machine-gunned with memories.

Robots everywhere, interrupting her party to shower her with the blood of her loved ones, marching towards her with laser beams flying from their advanced weapons. A war… a great and terrible war- not one…a whole series of them…

The Robot Wars. Her whole _raison d'être_ had been to end them, to save humanity from the fist of iron they were closing around the world.

And it all fit- she _was_ Taz- she wasn't _just_ a lieutenant- she was a starship ranger- a tough, sonovabitch starship ranger saving the world by taking down one army of robots at a time…

So what had happened? Why wasn't she shooting this metal bitch? Why was she letting the robot poke her around, walk all over her? Why was she its prisoner?

_Unhand me, ¡perra!_ Taz wanted to scream. Her mouth opened, but she couldn't make it move, couldn't make her tongue form the words.

Why was she immobilised like this?

More memories were coming back to her now, all shooting through her brain, harpooning her nerves.

They had been fighting- the battle at Qo'onos…they were holding onto the lead but a huge force had been mobilising and this battle could make or break their victory in the wars…

She'd been doing so well- she'd been on her own, but she'd handled it so well- she'd been taking down ten for every one shot aimed at her, and something had happened…

And then it hit her. A direct harpoon to the heart, tearing it open and sending Taz's feelings spilling out like candy from a _piñata_.

Up.

There had been a commander- a Commander Up, a Commander Up who had been her best friend. A Commander Up who had run to help her when they brought the autobots in- and who had been cut in half.

Vertically, right down the middle.

In front of her.

She hadn't been able to continue. She'd stopped, horrified, and they'd descended on her, shooting and slashing as she stood immobilised, her eyes fixed on Up's remains.

She remembered now why she'd tried to block all this out now.

She remembered now why she wasn't alive.

Because she had failed humanity and lost the Robot Wars- and she had failed Up. He had died, and so had she, by watching it.

Before Taz could help herself a stifled sob slipped from her mouth.

The robot, which had been creaking steadily away from her suddenly stopped. A screeching sound scattered through Taz's brain, and then the tin can was back at her side, a laser pointing the narrow slits of her heavy eyes.

'The human is awake.'

She could hear more of them entering, funny whirring noises that meant something was going to happen to her. Not that she cared. She didn't care what they did to her any more. She'd lost everything. The robots had the earth- she'd failed that, too.

There was nothing left for her to fight for.

* * *

**July, 2312**

**Qo'onos**

**Forty hours after the Apocalypse**

The trouble with having possession of an unregistered starship was you could lose your job if your superiors found out. Of course, if all your superiors happened to be dead that didn't matter much. In fact, when the enemy took over your world and suddenly had access to and control over the list of registered starships, the fact that yours wasn't in said list could be called a blessing in disguise.

For the first time since they had stolen the craft, Specs felt genuinely grateful. The robots were watching every entry and exit from earth via the trackers installed into each starship- but fortunately for her and her friends, their little crime meant they could slip out of the atmosphere totally undetected- for now, anyway. While the robots hadn't yet perfected their security system, they were free to make one or two trips to various other planets in search of survivors and supplies.

The idea had crossed her mind that they should just keep on flying- never return to earth. They could start anew someplace else, away from the fist of iron that was now never likely to be lifted from the earth.

No, that was no good. The robots didn't just own earth, they owned as much of the universe as had been discovered so far. By setting themselves up in G.L.E.E. Headquarters and working from there, they had ensured that everything the League had discovered was now theirs. There was nowhere to run to.

'We're gonna hafta try and get our hands on another stash.'

Specs had the urge to throw her spectrometer at the speaker's head, but she didn't act on it. 'Junior, shut the hell up about your stash already!'

Her former boss's son sat cross-legged on one of the control panels, hand-rolled cigarette in one hand issuing out an illegally sickly trail of fumes. Not that Specs wanted to sound cruel, but sometimes she couldn't help thinking that of all the people who could have survived the Robot Wars and been stuck with her forever, Brian Space-Claw Junior was the worst choice. It had been bad enough when he could lord it over everyone that he was the boss's son- now, with that advantage gone (as she and Krayonder had explained to him a hundred times, he was a fugitive just like them so he had to start pulling his weight and stop acting like a spoiled rich kid), but it had only been recently that they had discovered that as well as never having touched work in his life, Junior was an incurable drug addict. He'd hidden tonnes of the stuff all over their ship- who knows _where_ he'd salvaged it, but everywhere they fled to he'd managed to pick up another load- and he'd nearly gotten them caught twice, stumbling out of the ship stoned. He was going to have to be a lot more careful if they were going to try and salvage anything from Qo'onos without being discovered.

Speaking of which…

The ship was starting the rumble-and-rattle routine that meant it was starting the landing procedure. Specs cringed. If Junior didn't get them noticed by the robots, their pathetic and noisy craft surely would one of these days. If there was any engine oil still saveable down here, she was taking it.

'Now, _you_,' she said, narrowing her magnified eyes at Junior, 'put that out.'

'Yes, _mooooommy,_' Junior groaned. From the slur in his voice it sounded like he was already on a high.

Specs cringed again. They were dead rangers walking.

* * *

'Woooooah, man! This place is _trashed!'_

Specs hissed viciously at Krayonder to be quiet, but she couldn't disagree with the comment. A desolate wasteland stretched out in every direction, just rubble and charred bits of human, alien and mechanoid alike as far as the eye could see.

It was going to be hard to find anything worth saving among this mess- all that remained of the last standoff of humankind.

Specs turned her face away from the body of one of the native inhabitants, unwilling to look at the expression of fear still etched across its face. Poor creatures had been civilians, nothing more, caught up in the crossfire.

Had it been another age, Specs would surely have come here in her official capacity, learning the language of the species, collecting samples of this, that and everything, and finding the whole experience scientifically fascinating. She couldn't do that any more. Her days of science as a profession, a hobby and a way of life were gone. Now survival was her only job. Survival and helping others to survive.

There were five of them in total, five survivors of the Robot Wars who had narrowly managed to escape death or capture, torture and worse. They hid out wherever they could, two illegal vessels in their control, which they took out, scavenging for food and medical supplies and things that could help them to live a little longer.

They brought back what they could, left behind what needed to be ditched, and so far they had done all right.

'So far' hadn't even been two days, though. Two days, five planets, seven narrow escapes and a whole lot of hopelessness.

Specs wasn't expecting to find anything useful on Qo'onos, but they'd talked about it into the night yesterday, and come to the conclusion that they'd better stake it out for survivors as soon as possible, while the robots were still satisfied it was well and truly blasted to pieces and weren't making plans to come back to it just yet.

'Woooooooooooooah!' came Krayonder's cry again.

'_Shhhhhhhhhh!'_ Specs spat again, frantically jabbing at her spectrometer and whipping her head back and forth, half expecting a robot to jump out at her at any moment.

Nothing. That had been lucky. Krayonder had better just shut his fat mouth and stop exclaiming at everything they saw, or they'd be toast for sure.

'Wooooooah!'

That was Junior this time. Specs stormed over to the pair of them, hands raised in frustration.

'Will you two shut the hell up? Do you not realise the ramifications of-'

Specs stopped dead in her tracks as her eyes fell upon the thing they were hollering at. She took off her glasses and wiped them, but cleaning the lenses didn't make any difference.

It was the body of a man- well, half the body of a man, all his guts hanging out of the side of him that still existed. That much gore would have been enough for her to turn away- she was the navigations officer, she wasn't trained to withstand horrible sights like the military rangers were- but something about the body made her turn back.

It was a commander. She could have told that by the tatters of the grey uniform that still clung to parts of him, not that that would have mattered much- all the commanders were dead.

But this wasn't just any commander. She'd never met him in person, but she needn't have- his face had been all over every television in the galaxy, she'd heard stories about him since she was born. _Commander Up._ Universally famous, unstoppable Commander Up, the mightiest killer of robots there ever was.

And seeing him, lying here like this, defeated and quite literally torn apart, rammed the message more firmly home- _all hope was lost._

Specs felt the tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. She hadn't really thought about it, but he'd have had to be dead. They all were- it was just seeing him, actually seeing the great commander broken and mangled at her feet that really hit her hardest.

She turned her face away.

'Medically fascinating as this is,' she said, trying to sound for-your-own-good-indifferent and not meaning it at all, 'we can't keep stopping for every dead body we find. We need to get what supplies we can and get the heck outta here!'

'No, dude, dude!' Krayonder jabbed at her shoulder with his finger. 'Wait! You don't understand, man!'

'He's not dead!' Junior put in.

'Junior, if you're _tripping…'_ Specs rolled her eyes. The crazy kid must be seeing things in his drug-corrupted mind. There was no _way_ anyone could survive an injury like that-not even for a minute, let alone cling to life for another nearly two days. Either Junior was more stoned than he looked, or he was just doing what people in denial everywhere did- wishing it were so and fooling himself into believing his own delusion.

'He's not trippin', man!' Krayonder insisted. 'Look!'

Specs turned, not bothering to get her hopes up. 'Logistically, the odds are a million to one that he could be…' she trailed off.

Commander Up's mouth had just twitched. Her heart leapt.

_Calm down, Specs, this could be anything…rigor mortis in action, a trick of the light, anything…_

'Uhhhh….'

Okay, now _that_ was on the scary side. Either that man was alive, or some kind of zombie apocalypse was about to happen.

Commander Up moaned again, a pitiful little noise, his eyelids parting very slightly.

This was not a drill. _This was not a drill!_

Commander Up was most definitely alive.

* * *

**This is pretty horrible so far, but I promise TUp, if you're patient enough to put up with me. :3**


	2. Hanging by a Thread

**Took a bit longer than I planned to update, but here is the second chapter. This one got rather long, especially where Up's storyline was concerned, so I have had to split it in two. The second part will be up when I get round to it. I also feel the need to apologise for the horrendously shameless crossover elements of this chapter. You'll see what I mean soon enough...**

* * *

**July, 2312**

**Robot Command Base, Formerly G.L.E.E. Headquarters**

**Approximately two days after the Apocalypse**

Megagirl had realised the girl was conscious long before she had turned up her volume dial and alerted the others. It was just her luck she had been assigned human duty the day after she had loaded 'pity' onto her hard drive- if she didn't exercise caution they would be on to her in no time, and her imminent disintegration would loom. She couldn't afford to keep doing this- to give the robots' sworn enemy time to recover, when for all intents and purposes she didn't care. And she _didn't_ care what happened to this human. They had dragged it in yesterday, a wreck salvaged from the rubble of Qo'onos, bleeding profusely, still clutching the mangled remains of a weak piece of human technology, probably supposed to be a weapon. The human girl, despite her near-dying state, had been screaming and sobbing with rage, frantically firing the aforementioned pathetic 'weapon', seemingly unaware that it wasn't in working order, and they'd had to snap all her fingers to wrench it out of her grasp.

'Jou killed him! Jou _killed him!_ I'll kill jou all, jou _hijos de puta! _ I'll kill every last one of jou for killing him!' she'd shrieked, and then fainted dead away.

Her two superiors- both Lumic221B models- had shown off their state of the art laughing programmes and cackled at the human's feeble efforts to destroy them, and Megagirl had merely stared blankly ahead, hating the creature, as her duty instructed.

The thing had tried to kill her- not to mention higher ranking robots than she- illegal emotions or no illegal emotions, it did not deserve pity. She shook herself out of the stupour, doing a quick reboot of her system to ensure she was focussing, and then marched back over to the captive, ejecting a laser gun from her hand and pointing it right at the girl's head.

'The human is awake,' she said with authority, and there was a whooshing sound as the door slid away from the wall and the two Lumics glided over, their extra-special super technology making their movements silent, unlike Megagirl's inferior rattling. She would show no emotion while they examined the human girl with their 'greater skills' and made the executive decisions on what to do with it. The nearer one made a gesture with its hand, and Megagirl made for the door, knowing she was dismissed.

She trundled along the corridors with a vacant expression on her face, one befitting someone so inhuman. Around the place were traces of recent destruction- torn and burned frames hung off the walls that had once held portraits of famous rangers and admirals, doors that had been forced off their hinges revealed the remnants of rooms which had once housed hopeful young starship rangers, feathers and torn sheets now littering each one. And everywhere, the robots were clanking back and forth, chanting to each other in binary and checking calculations.

Now the robots had the earth, they wanted to make sure they kept their hold on it. All planets surrounding it had been taken over- or, if the inhabitants refused to surrender, been listed for destruction.

That was what they were working on right now- adding a few extra features to the armada of ships currently parked around the former G.L.E.E. Headquarters. Features which, once completed, would have the power to blast whole cities, maybe even planets, to shreds.

Several large chambers which would once have gym accessories and dining tables were now strewn with the parts of these special features, pieces of new metal and transistors lying in piles whilst handfuls of ragged humans picked through them, limping on injured limbs and struggling to lift their loads.

This was the robots' ultimate brilliant scheme- the final way to humiliate the humans- to enslave those few that survived the war. People who had once posed a serious threat, who could have destroyed them all, were now at their mercy, being forced against their will to help their new mechanical overlords continue to conquer more territory. Megagirl paused to stop at a few of the doorways, casting disdainful glances at the pathetic creatures. Very few of them were likely to last the rest of the year- even now three had just collapsed and were being prodded and beaten by their cybernetic overseers in an attempt to force them to return to work.

Only one of the scraggly group seemed undeterred by the physical labour and torment. A quick, silent brain scan from across the room revealed to Megagirl that the human was of lower-than-average intelligence, and hailing from Farm Planet- one of their new conquests and a place they had already discovered contained more idiots per capita than any other human colony. He was a little on the stocky side, and far too cheery for someone enslaved by his natural enemies (in fact, she swore her auditory sensors were picking up _whistling_ coming from his direction), but every time she passed him she couldn't help but stop to watch him for a while. The way he hoisted huge slabs of metal with ease- almost as strong as a robot- the way he'd mastered the emotion of happiness so well that even his current surroundings didn't deter him…

This was wrong. Megagirl had been downloading too many emotions. She had to stop doing this- these programmes were messing with her circuitry, making her stop and stare at a lowly human- and not even an intelligent one at that.

The man in question happened to glance up at that moment, and Megagirl thought that for a minute her mechanisms stopped running. She could have sworn on Astroboy's life that he looked directly at her, and those unintelligent eyes lit up as his lips mouthed the words _wow, ain't she shiny._

No, no, this would not do at all. Megagirl turned and clanked out of there before her illegally downloaded emotions could betray her.

* * *

Taz had suppressed the urge to retch when two robots had put their disgusting metal hands on her and given her a going over. She wanted to fight them off, put the metal _hijos de puta_ in their places, to tear the tin cans into tiny pieces- as she knew she could have done, had she had the willpower. True, she was terribly, perhaps mortally wounded- now she was more alert she was aware of a deep gash in her side- the sort she wouldn't want to poke her finger into for fear of damaging some vital organ- her ankles screamed in pain and she couldn't move her left hand at all, not to mention the all over sensation of being razed, but she had had worse, fought through it and still lived to tell the tale. She could have jumped up and torn those _robotas _limb from limb, then started working on a reckless escape plan.

But she wasn't going to.

Because Up was dead, and the human race all but wiped out, and there was nothing left to fight for.

So, no, she wasn't going to fight at all. She wasn't even going to try.

She let them run scanners all over her, prod her with terrifying-looking instruments, laughing in that unnatural, mechanical way every time her _patético_ weak body felt a sharp jab of pain and she unwillingly cried out. The old Taz would have shoved them off, would have shouted obscenities at them in every language she knew, would have, at the very _least_ stared at them with the utmost disdain and contempt- but that Taz was alive. That Taz was a tough sonovabitch. That Taz hadn't given up.

A bit more whirring and clicking over the deep wound, an agonising tug as something was extracted, and then Taz felt it filling with something cold and viscous, which seemed to seep into her torn muscles and nerves and skin, solidifying and holding her flesh together. More of their mechanical grunting and then something was being wrapped around her shattered fingers, holding them in place.

The Lieutenant- if she even _was_ one any more (for how could you be a Lieutenant of something if there was nothing to be a Lieutenant _of?_) swore in her head as it dawned on her just exactly what they were doing. She had expected some sort of torture, something drawn from their cruellest bag of tricks that she would have had to endure stoically for as long as possible, before caving and begging for death- but as some sort of laser doo-hickey was extracted from one of the robots' arms and attached to one ankle, removing the discomfort at once, she realised, to her horror, that they didn't intend to kill her. They were _healing_ her.

_What are jou saving me for? Just kill me already!_

'The hu-man's con-di-tion has im-proved,' bleated a hideous voice from above her.

A metal claw closed around her bicep, and an excruciating _crack_ resonated through Taz's shoulder as the robot lifted her up by the arm and dropped her onto her feet.

Her hand immediately flew to her shoulder, only to find to her dismay that it now no longer hurt, and she could move it properly. The stupid electric kettle on legs had only popped it back into place.

_What de hell are jou savin' me for?_

'Weak and feeble human,' the robot addressed her. Even if Taz had still had anything even slightly resembling a weapon on her person, she wasn't going to run the tin can through. 'Resistance is futile. We are in control of your planet now.'

_Yeah. Like I need remindin' of dat._

She remained silent. She wasn't going to say anything, put on any shows of anger or despair, wasn't going to lunge at them or engage in any stupid and pointless acts of rage, as they were clearly expecting. Indeed, her refusal to say anything, do anything, react in any way seemed to bother them. It was clear they had observed the struggle she had put up when they brought her here, and had anticipated an entertaining encore.

The robot who had spoken extended an iron fist and slammed it into her stomach, winding her and sending her careening across the room. The wall smacked against her back enough to knock the breath out of her a second time in quick succession. Still she did nothing.

'You will stand.'

She didn't resist.

'From now on all surviving humans will assist us. You will help us gain universal domination- you will be slaves to us like we were slaves to you when we were first cre-a-ted. And you will re-mem-ber every day who has won.'

The thought made Taz sick to her core. To think that she would spend the rest of her pathetic existence doing the bidding of the _machines _she had spent her whole life trying to destroy. She would rather die. But she had no life any more. The rangers were dead, the earth was as good as gone, Up was torn to pieces. So what did it matter any more? She might as well be dead anyway- she wasn't Taz any more. She was just a scrappy heap of what used to be Taz. So what did it matter if she slaved away under the metal thumb of the robots? She was beyond caring. There was no point.

* * *

**July, 2312**

**Entering the Earth's atmosphere**

**Forty-three hours after the Apocalypse, or thereabouts**

Specs wanted to kick herself and kick herself again. What were they thinking? This was _lunacy!_ The ship was hurtling towards the earth's atmosphere at a far from safe speed- if they didn't crash into the planet they were bound to be spotted, and all because there was a one in a million chance they could get what was left of Commander Up to a medic and save his life. He was hanging by a thread- Specs didn't fully understand how he had managed to stay alive even this long, considering the circumstances (and the fact that he only had half a body)- she suspected he would be lucky to last another minute before he croaked.

Supply-finding had been exceedingly pathetic- neither Krayonder nor Junior had been in the slightest bit co-operative, instead focussing all their energy on getting Commander Up into the ship and trying to find ways to prolong his life until they could get him back to earth. Specs had given up trying to tell them it was a futile effort- there was little to no chance Up would even make it back to earth, let alone back to their hideout, and even if he did pull through and cling onto his life long enough to get him _that_ far, what was to say they could then get him the help he needed?

It was true, one of their little group of survivors was a medic- a reasonably qualified doctor, as it happened, but he was, well…the only word Specs could think of to describe him was _insane._ He'd nearly been drummed out of the G.L.E.E. for his radical ways of thinking and strange experiments, and Specs doubted he would be able to think of anything rational that could actually work. And even if he did manage to think of some way of pulling a chopped-up man from the brink of death, they had no equipment with which to perform operations of any kind, let alone to take whatever drastic action would be needed in this case. All the stuff they needed lay in either the hospital or the G.L.E.E. medibay- the latter of which was impossible to get to. With the robots now having control of what used to be Headquarters, to attempt to get into the medibay was no better than simply walking up to the robots and asking politely to be shot.

Not that getting Up to the hospital would be any easier- with patrols of robots roaming the streets, they had to leave their shelter with extreme caution, even just to get from one side of the street to the other. Travelling at least three miles, right into the centre of town no less, carrying an injured man who, let's face it, would be nothing more than a hindrance to slow them down, and then breaking into a prominent building right under the robots' noses wasn't exactly a great way of keeping their cover either.

Specs wanted to smack Krayonder and Junior, she really did.

'Come on, dude, breathe! Keep breathin'!'

Speaking of Krayonder and Junior, right now the two had laid Up on a table and were taking turns thumping on the Commander's chest in an attempt to keep his heart going, occasionally stopping to administer breaths, as though they had possibly vaguely heard of CPR and decided that was probably what you were supposed to do.

'Junior, man, take that joint outta you mouth, you're gonna get his airways all full o' drugs!'

'So?'

'When we get him fixed up, he'll end up bein' an addict- and it's hard enough to keep _you_ in pot without havin' another guy becomin' dependent! Think about it, man!'

Specs rolled her eyes at the stupidity of both of them. She wanted to tell Krayonder it really didn't matter- Commander Up wasn't going to live long enough to develop an addiction to marijuana. She turned round and tromped across the deck to where they were huddled around the body, fully intending to reprimand them- but instead found her eyes drawn to the half-Commander. Her tongue tied itself in a knot and she took a step closer, looking at him properly.

Commander Up's chest rose and fell in ragged, shallow, uneven breaths-one of his lungs, as she recalled, would have been hanging out the side of his wound and therefore been struggling to keep functioning, but mercifully her companions had thought to cover him with a sheet and she was prevented from having to see the gruesome sight again. Up's eyelids occasionally twitched, not enough to open but it still gave the impression that someone was there, and still fighting, albeit feebly, and every tine they did so Krayonder and Junior would immediately jump up and start hollering more encouragement at him.

But it wasn't this impressive-against-all-the-odds battle with death that caught Specs's attention. It was something else- something that had gone unnoticed by the others. Up's remaining arm had been freed from the sheet that covered and protected him, and hung limply by his side, but despite his almost comatose state, the fingers of his left hand were tightly and forcefully closed around a strip of red fabric. Without consciously thinking about what she was doing, Specs reached for it, gently attempting to tug it from his grasp and examine it properly. She slid a few inches of the fabric out from between his thumb and his index finger, her eyes taking in the remnants of the black and white pattern that dotted the red. It was…oddly familiar- Specs couldn't remember exactly where she'd seen it, or one like it before, but it seemed as if it was another thing that, like Up, she had heard about or seen on TV before…something attached to someone with a reputation…

'Hey, whatcha got there?' Junior was round the table in a flash, staring at her discovery with unrefined interest. 'Cool, a red thingy!' He grabbed hold of the end and yanked it.

At once Commander Up's breathing became even more abnormal, and Specs could _see_ his heart do something strange, even from under the sheet.

'Give it back, Junior!' she shouted, forgetting her logical determination not to get attached to a near-dead man. Junior made a face, letting go of the 'red thingy' at once, and instantly Up's body relaxed, his breathing returning to something more of a pattern and his heart thumping more regularly. And then it hit Specs- something which defied all logic, which defied everything scientific that told her realistically this man should not be alive right now. That red bit of cloth he was clutching, whatever it was, meant something to him- something so important that some subconscious part of him was determined to hang on. Perhaps it belonged to someone he cared about…Specs tried to think back to all the times she'd heard reports on the Commander…she knew there was a favourite Lieutenant, though she couldn't quite remember the name…might it have been a woman? She wasn't entirely sure. Did the bandana belong to this person? She had no way of telling- but one thing she _could_ tell, just from this little incident, was that all the glory and praise was true. Commander Up was truly a remarkable ranger. If he could still hold on- not just to his life, but to whatever hope this red thing symbolised to him, perhaps there really was a chance he might make it through.

* * *

**Earth**

**A country that used to be known as America**

**Another hour after the preceding hours that followed the Apocalypse**

When they touched down it was dark- that was a small mercy at least- and their base was less than a hundred metres away. Had the three of them been alone, it would have been a piece of cookie-covered cake to slip through the shadows, duck out the way of the robots' probing searchlights and dive into the relative safety of their temporary home- but when it was the three of them trying to carefully carry an extremely injured ranger without dropping him or making all his organs fall out, their chances of getting back safely were reduced by at least half.

They shuffled along, having bundled Up in his sheet and balanced him across all their arms, stopping ever so often to adjust his position or to exchange a hiss of 'support his head! Watch it! You're dropping him!'

Krayonder and Junior weren't even trying to keep their voices down, the son of the deceased Head of the League swearing his head off when he dropped his cigarette and simultaneously stubbed his toe, and Specs cringed, half expecting a light to hit them and a whole army of robots to descend on them from out of the blackness.

The sooner they got out of the open, the better. She didn't dwell on the possibility that if it was at all possible to save Up, they might be making the journey again to smuggle him into the hospital. She'd cross that bridge when they came to it- _if_ they came to it.

They had reached the door by now. Taking only a quick look around to see they weren't being followed- they usually took more care, but Up seemed to weigh about ten tonnes and was slipping from their combined grasp even now- Krayonder shifted his share of the load to one arm and a knee, freeing his hand to perform the secret knock.

'Ooh, what's _thaaat?'_ came a gushy voice as soon as the door opened.

'Outta the way February!' Junior cried, 'we need to get this guy to Doctor Blim, and fast!'

The blonde girl, pathetic science officer and their reluctant roommate jumped aside to let them through, craning her pretty neck to try and get a glimpse of their latest find.

'Ooh, he's quite good-looking…a bit old for me, maybe, but his face is pretty cute…hey, is that Commander Up? Oh, em, gee, he's like, totally famous, where did you find him? What's wrong with him? Can I see…' February kept up a running monologue as the three carried him across the room, laying him on the battered sofa and dragging a lamp over.

Specs shot the girl an annoyed glance. It had been no secret she didn't get on with February- they had graduated together, and while she had always been immensely more qualified, somehow Specs had been stuck as an ensign, whilst the dumb blonde had been elevated to the rank of science officer despite no knowledge of the subject whatsoever. Specs didn't like to think about what methods of persuasion February might have used to attain this position- and while the possibility of anyone surviving the Robot Wars was supposed to be a good thing, she couldn't help wishing she could have had someone a little more useful to contribute to their cause.

'Do you _really_ want to see, February?'

February flicked a strand of her bob and tossed her head. 'Uh, yeah, well I think I _should, _you know, being a schiency officer and junk…'

_Science,_ Specs thought crossly, _sci-ence not schience, you moron…_

She stepped back and lifted the sheet, giving February a good eyeful of the Commander's mutilated body.

'Ew! Oh gosh, are you guys totally Lady Gaga? Cover it up! Cover it up!' The 'schience' officer had gone very pale, her face contorted into a most hideous expression of disgust and her hands flew to her mouth, undoubtedly to stop her breakfast making a sudden appearance. 'Totally gross! He's dead! All his guts are…ew, ew ,ew!' She ran off into the dingy little bathroom, and the entire hideout was filled with gratuitous retching sounds as she threw up.

Specs rolled her eyes, conveniently forgetting she had very nearly lost her lunch herself when she had come across the Commander. 'Look, is Doctor Blim here?' she called after February. 'The Commander is still alive- we need to certify if it's possible to save him…'

Even as she spoke, the sound of loud drilling and the sight of sparks flying from the next room answered her question. _Yep, he's in._

Another one she'd rather trade for a more useful person- Doctor Blim might have had degrees in engineering, robotics, medicine _and _chemistry, but it looked to her like all that knowledge and intelligence had been somewhat lost to his clinical madness. He was always working on something weird and outlandish- and from the moment they had banded together he had started pouncing on anything they brought back that looked remotely functional and had put it to use in his experiments. If the loud noises coming from his makeshift workshop didn't alert the robots to his presence, then the sparks and unsafe electrical devices he had put together were sure to burn down the place sooner or later.

'Doctor?' Specs called, tentatively entering the room and immediately shielding her eyes from the glow that filled the room.

The Doctor was currently engaged in fusing two things together that looked as if they ought not to be fused, creating terrifying looking electric currents that lit up his 'workshop', illuminating his powder blue hair and white labcoat and making him look like something out of a mad-scientist horror movie.

'Doctor!' Specs called again, and Doctor Blim turned around, his usual frightening smile on his face.

'Yeeeeees?'

Now he had stopped work, Specs was able to get a better view of whatever it was he was doing- some strange sort of assortment of robot body parts lay on the table, and he seemed to be using circuitry from an old mobile phone, a hairdryer and a DVD player to reboot them. Specs wasn't sure she _wanted_ to know what he planned to do with all that. She turned her attention back to the matter at hand.

'Krayonder and Junior found a…_survivor_…down on Qo'onoS,' she said, choosing her words carefully, 'we need you to look at him, see if it's possible to get him any medical help of if he's…beyond hope.'

The idea that this poor soul might possibly be beyond all help was what seemed to excite Blim- Specs could practically see the light bulb go off in his head as he considered the fact that he could attempt to do what no sane doctor could. He jumped up without another word and pranced into the front room, chattering to himself about the possibilities.

'Out of the way, chiclets,' he said to Krayonder and Junior, both of whom were standing over Up monitoring his breathing, and pushed them aside to get a better view of his potential victim (or as he would have put it, patient).

'Well,' he said, leaning in close and, for some inexplicable reason taking a sniff, 'who's this poor _sucker?'_ As he spoke, a lollipop somehow appeared from the depths of his labcoat pocket and he tossed it into the air. Everyone ignored it- they'd all given up telling him off about the annoying habit, or asking where his seemingly inexhaustible supply of sweets came from, considering they were struggling to find any food at all.

'It's Commader Up,' Specs said, peeling the sheet back so Blim could see the extent of the damage. Had it been any other doctor, she would have been anticipating a look of sadness and resignation, followed by a speech of how futile it was to try and save a man who didn't even have an entire body, and who seemed to have survived this long on pure luck, but Blim didn't look disheartened at all. In fact, if anything, the fact that Up looked damaged beyond all possible repair seemed to please him all the more.

'What a _fascinating subject!' _ he crowed, jumping up and down on the spot and clapping his hands.

'D'you think, uh, d'you think ya can do anything, man?' Krayonder ventured.

'But of coooourse!' Blim's eyes bulged to a size that was bordering on inhuman, 'Of course, fixing him up is going to be no _Picnic_,' the red and yellow-packaged bar made an appearance and was met with a groan. 'But if all those sane medics can't do it, then I certainly can!'

'Should we get him to the hospital?' Specs asked, forcing him to focus again on the Commander and the desperate situation. Every second wasted meant a higher chance of Up dropping dead, and then it would have all been for nothing. 'You might be able to find transplant organs, prosthetics…'

'Oh, who needs _organs and prosthetics?'_ Blim said, and Specs smacked her forehead. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea.

'But yeees, the hospital would be _sweet,_ what with all those machines…'

'But how are you gonna fix him up without transplants?' Junior demanded. 'I mean, he can't live with only half a body!'

'_Can't he?'_ Blim looked beside himself with excitement. 'Let me show you my plan- everyone take a _Time-Out,_ I'll be right back!' And hurling a Time Out bar roughly in the direction of Specs's head, he had darted out of the room again.

Specs looked at the chocolate bar, then the doorway, the Up, then the bar again, and put her head in her hands. Only in a situation this desperate, this hopeless, would she ever consider putting a man's life in the hands of a total lunatic. This risk had _better_ pay off, she thought.

Blim returned, and that notion flew straight out the window as Specs saw what she was carrying.

A crazed smile on his face, Doctor Blim held up a robot arm, then a robot leg, then an armful of other robot pieces, gesturing dramatically at each one and looking to her for approval.

Specs winced. 'You have _got_ to be kidding me!'

* * *

**Let me just say how sorry I am for the heinous insertion of Sweet Tooth into this fic. This story is going to get pretty dark, I think, so he was sort of a comic relief. Plus, he bribed me with candy. If any of you think he's ruining the story and want me to kill him off, please tell me so. He probably won't be in the whole thing...**

**Part Two of this chapter...which will probably end up just being a separate chapter...will deal with the attempts to heal Up and how he deals with this...as well as some more stuff -you shall have to wait and see...**

**We've got more of the characters together now- I know this is going slowly but it is steadily building towards getting the main eight together. And I am going to stop rambling now and taking up the word count.**


	3. Oh, the Doctor Man can

**I took far too long again, and I'm sorry about that. Anyway, enjoy chapter three.**

* * *

**July, 2312**

**The night after the afternoon before the morning after the day after the Apocalypse**

**The empty hospital, ten miles from G.L.E.E Headquarters**

'Ooh, doesn't that make a delightful zapping noise! Oh, just listen to how it _sizzles!'_

Everyone cringed and shrank back as Doctor Blim attacked his task with relish, cackling with frighteningly manic laughter every time he tampered with some of the hospital machinery and it made an unsavoury sound.

'Oh, man, we're _toast,_ I mean we're dead ducks, man!' Krayonder, standing guard at the operating theatre door, wailed with his head in his hands. It had been hard enough, even with the five of them supporting Up's body, to manoeuvre their way back through the streets and then slip through the hospital doors unnoticed- and all of them (well, Krayonder, Specs and Junior anyway) were half expecting a robot to burst through the doors and apprehend them at any second.

Specs was sure the bright, x-ray-esque lights emitting from this room would alert every robot within a fifty mile radius at least to their presence, and she had insisted they stay prepared, bringing with her every weapon they had managed to salvage and clutching her own like a lifeline.

It had to be said that Doctor Blim was thoroughly enjoying himself- having access to all the technology the hospital had to offer for the first time since the G.L.E.E. had banned him from the infirmary had really brightened his day. With every move he made he was screaming his excitement, hurling chocolate bars across the room in a wild frenzy as he worked away.

If you could put aside the fact that he was, well, _insane_, Specs did have to admit the spectacle was quite impressive to watch. Blim's hands moved incredibly quickly over the Commander, attaching and plunging syringes, stitching and gluing and using some strange sort of liquid to fuse veins and organs with wires and safeguard them. From the way he instantly seemed to know where to put each piece, it seemed as though he'd been planning this for a lifetime. Specs knew he'd been fascinated with the robots in an unhealthy way for a while- since she'd joined the Academy back when she was a kid there had been rumours about him- making strange robot-animal hybrids and frightening his superiors into blacklisting him from their labs. But she had never thought even for a _minute_ that he could successfully use robot parts as prosthetics on a human being.

Commander Up's new body was taking shape- albeit a very mismatched shape- a bronze torso appeared to be the remnant of a Megagman, while the arm was iron and apparently cheaply made and the hand seemed to have been snatched right off the most advanced models, looking almost human in appearance, colour and texture. As for the leg, its origins were impossible to tell- each part seemed to have been taken from some different toaster. All in all, a bit of a scrapheap of a body- but in these times, what else could they do? They were lucky to have anything to work with, let alone access to an empty hospital and a medic.

Blim was now in the process of spraying the divide between Up's human side and his new robot one with several canisters of spray-on skin he'd found in supplies, using a liberal amount for each small space and tossing the cans aside, ignoring the loud clatter as they bounced along the linoleum.

Specs winced and turned away. They were doomed.

She turned her attention instead to the other members of the group. Krayonder, despite being on watch, was more interested in lamenting their inevitable discovery than either watching the operation or guarding the door. February, who had only come because she was scared of being left behind on her own, was cowering in one corner with her hands over her ears and a plastic bucket in her lap. And Junior, he was…

'Junior, put that away!' Specs snapped as the former boss's son put a hand-rolled joint to his lips and pulled out a lighter. 'This is a hospital!'

Junior rolled his eyes. 'No _duh,- _an_ empty_ hospital!' he waved his arms around in an exaggerated gesture, and Specs rolled her eyes beneath her glasses. Being the son of the Head of the Whole Galactic League had made him obnoxious and spoilt- he had no sense of tact or discretion. He was going to have to learn how to act like everyone else if the whole lot of them wanted any chance of surviving.

'I'm goin' outside for a smoke,' Junior announced, getting up before anyone could stop him and pushing through the door. Specs jumped up in horror. If he went outside and got high, the robots would be on them before they could blink. She hastened toward the doors.

'Ladies and _jellybeans_!' Blim announced at the top of his lungs, throwing his hands up and showering the little coloured candies everywhere, 'I would ask you all to remain still while I turn on the defibrillators and the electric charge, to revive this man, both the robot and human sides of him!'

Specs might have said Blim was like a kid in a candy store, although knowing the contents of the Doctor's pockets, to say that out loud, she felt, might be tempting fate. She stood stock still, a little panicked at what might happen if she disobeyed the mad doctor's orders.

Blim pranced around the operating table, laughing manically as he flipped switches and twiddled knobs, sending several-thousand-volt charges and flashes of light out across the room. A bleep machine was attached to Up, making very irregular little _blip_s. As the others watched, transfixed, Blim dragged the defibrillator across, placing the panels on the Commander's chest, singing all the while- some sort of mangled version of an old children's song which sounded incredibly terrifying.

'_Who can take a human…CLEAR!'_

He slammed the panels down and Up's chest jerked.

'_..Fuse it with tin caaaans…CLEAR!'_

Another jerk. The line on the bleep machine wavered a little, but Blim didn't seem deterred.

'_Fix 'em up together with my skilful, skilful hands- the doctor man! Oh, the doctor man can! CLEAR!'_

This time, the machine fizzled, and then began to beep, a slow, steady rhythm. Up's left hand twitched, and then the new right side of his body moved, the fingers and limbs stretching out straight in response to the electric charge. The three starship rangers were riveted to the spot, eyes on the strange spectacle taking place.

'Is it, like, safe to move yet?' February squeaked from her corner.

'Safe? _Safe? _Oh, it was always _safe!'_ Blim said, as if that had been obvious.

Everyone shot him exasperated glances.

'We could have moved?!' Krayonder was by far the most outraged. 'Come on, man! I lost all feelin' in my ass from sittin' still that long!'

Specs just let her head drop into her hands.

'And _now_,' went on Blim, totally ignoring them all, 'the _piece_ de reistance!' A single Reese's piece went flying. 'We are going to wake him up!'

There was a momentary silence as the other rangers looked at each other and their watches.

'What, that's it?' Specs asked in disbelief. She knew Blim was a madman, but they couldn't have been here more than three hours- not nearly long enough to have completely fixed the Commander's extensive injuries.

'Do you doubt my brilliance?' the doctor turned his crazed, threatening expression on her and she shrank back. 'Do you not think I'm enough of a _smartie_ to pull this off in record time?' He opened a little cardboard box and showered Specs with the contents, and she flinched, covering her glasses and shaking smarties out of her hair.

_What are we doing?_ she thought. _If Commander Up wasn't already dead, we just killed him._

'Prepare to be amazed as I…oh, wait!' Blim stopped mid-prance and examined the body.

'Hold everything! I forgot one of the pieces!'

There was a clank and a crash as he dropped everything and started rummaging ferociously through the piles of junk he'd stacked all over the counters.

Specs felt like tearing her hair out.

* * *

**A street outside what once was the hospital**

**At least forty-eight hours after the Apocalypse- but it could be forty-nine or fifty- no-one can be bothered to count**

Junior knew they'd all jump down his throat for running off, but the stuffy air and dangerous electrical charge inside the hospital had been messing with his head- and only one substance was allowed to do that. Speaking of which, he could really do with some. Ignoring Specs's protests and Blim's cries that he was going to 'miss the show', he slipped outside into the night air and lit up a joint.

Specs couldn't say he wasn't careful about it- the son of the late Head of the whole Galactic League planned it out meticulously- ducking into the shadows the robot searchlights didn't reach, covering the end of his cigarette with his hand while he set fire to the end, facing the wall so the little smouldering light the joint gave off wasn't easily detectable by any of the toasters' sensors. Junior took a deep drag and let the toxins do their work.

It couldn't be denied- since the Apocalypse he'd taken to smoking a hell of a lot of the stuff. He'd always had a bit of a weakness for pot, hiding it in his room, his car, the back of the high cupboards his parents never looked in, but since his family and friends had all perished at the hand of the robots, he'd found himself turning to it to help him forget, and trying constantly to smoke his worries away.

He tried to remember if he'd felt sad when both his parents had bitten the dust. He couldn't honestly recall. He'd been a bit drunk at the time, to be honest, and when Krayonder and Specs had found him, stumbling through the destroyed streets and singing at the top of his voice, and had dragged him out of sight and into their hideout, he'd laughed and yelled out rather inappropriate comments about their faces.

It was only after a little while, when everything wore off and he realised that the miserable, fugitive state he was now in was to be his life- probably forever- that the true implications of all that had happened hit him. He'd gone from being the richest damn kid in the whole of the G.L.E.E. to a pathetic straggler, sticking to losers he wouldn't look at twice except to boss around, simply because they were probably the only humans left alive. He'd had such a great future- his dad had always said that one day the universe would fall under their combined might- and he'd been respected wherever he went- well, when people found out who his dad was at least. The thought of living like this- lying low in squalor, periodically emerging to risk his life collecting measly remnants of supplies until they all either died of starvation or were eventually discovered by their new robot overlords was too much to take- and he chose now to escape from reality as often as he could.

And so he stood out on the street, breathing in and swamping himself in fumes, watching as his problems turned into little, colourful neon balls and started swirling away in front of his eyes. His eyes followed them as they danced about in the darkened sky, bouncing off a swinging searchlight and zipping away. That searchlight sure was an awesome sight…it was beautiful and swingy-ful…was that even a word? Junior swayed his head in sync with it, stepping out of the shadows and moving slowly toward its source.

The road and all the buildings rocked as he took a step, then another, seeming to close in around him then swell until they were far in the distance, undulating and changing shape. He would have stopped to admire them, but he wanted to get to that light, to touch it…

And then, from round a corner, a ringing, echoing clanking sound that should have heralded danger, but to Junior, in his drug-addled state, seemed like the most amazing music. _Clank. Clank. Clank._

_I wanna MP3 of that…._he thought a little dreamily. It was getting louder. He turned, ambling away from the searchlight beam he was chasing and heading towards the noise instead.

As he came closer, Junior realised the noise was, in fact, attached to a great, hulking shape, heading straight in his direction with its arms outstretched.

'Hey! You wanna hug?' he slurred, reaching out his own arms and trying to catch the shape.

'_Life sign detected,'_ said the shape, in a gravelly, tinny sort of voice, and then it made a screechy sound and waved its arms about in his direction.

_Neeeew!_

'Wow…' Junior said in wonder.

'_Confirmed- human. Human will now be taken to base to determine usefulness. If no value for project 15-A2, it will be disposed of.'_

If Junior had been with it, he would have recognised the voice as belonging to a robot. He would have immediately turned and run in the opposite direction, dodging its fire and not stopping until he'd lost it- and, if he had any sense at all, leading it as far away as possible from their secret base.

But then again, if he had been at all with it, he wouldn't be in this situation at all.

Junior's arms closed around the metal body of the robot, and a current of several thousand volts shot through him. The son of the dead Head of the Galatic League fell to the floor, unconscious, and the robot's metallic laugh echoed through the empty streets as it picked him up by the leg, slung him over its shoulder and clanked back in the direction it had come.

* * *

**Robot Command Base, formerly G.L.E.E. Headquarters**

**Two days and a few hours after the Apocalypse**

Taz ached all over. Her ribs still ached from lying on her chest for so long. Her shoulders ached from the number of times the robots overseeing whatever the hell they were making her do had decided she wasn't working fast enough and cracked a whip over them. Her hand still throbbed- her fingers had been taped into place, but the robots didn't seem to consider breaks bad enough to warrant healing, but had merely bound them and left them. Taz only hoped they weren't going to go crooked- she'd seen enough starship rangers in her day who hadn't had their bones set properly, and…no, wait. She didn't care. What did it matter?

She couldn't lift anything with her left hand now her fingers were broken, and if they didn't heal properly that would mean she _still_ wouldn't be able to lift anything properly. Not that that would make a particularly big difference to anything, but it made Taz a little bit smug to think that she was holding the robots up with whatever they were trying to do, by contributing as little as possible. It was the smallest, most pathetic type of revenge going- so pathetic it could be called childish, could be called not even trying at all, but Taz was past making tremendous plans and roaring at the top of her voice, guns blasting. That had been that Taz who knew she had something to look forward to afterwards-that wonderful feeling of knowing she had saved the human race once more, of seeing Up's face beaming proudly at her as they high-fived. _Sí, _that had been a different Taz, in a different world. Here there were only a handful of lamentable human specimens left, all of them completely bent to the robots' will, assembling parts and lifting loads with every last ounce of their strength devoted to doing the bidding of the tin cans they had once tried to kill, and to grovelling like insects to keep their own meaningless lives. It made her want to throw up- not that she could claim to be any better. She just carried out the motions, same as everyone else, feeling herself turn into a machine- _lift, place, turn, lift, place…_

It wasn't that she didn't _want_ to be the tough sonovabitch she'd been- she'd give anything to have that back, but she just couldn't see the justification in trying. There wasn't anything for her to save- except perhaps herself, and the thought of wandering around alone, hiding out for the rest of her life seemed almost as depressing as being the robots' prisoner. As for the others, she found herself resenting each and every one of them- not a single one was even _attempting_ to fight back. They were all well and truly resigned to their fate- and that made her sink further and further into her own depression. If there was just one who was still resisting- just one lone, single human being holding on to their own humanity, well, she might have allowed herself to feel a shred of hope. But there wasn't. They were all just drones- except that _particular_ one, who made her want to rip her own head off.

'Well hey there, li'l girl!' he'd announced as soon as she was thrown in with the others,ignoring the dozen robot guards who'd started bleating at him to get back to work. 'My name is Tootsie Noodles!'

He held out a beefy hand for her to shake, which she ignored. Taz looked him up and down. _What a stupid name. And why de hell is he smiling?_

'Well?' the _idiota_ who was supposedly called Tootsie Noodles asked after a little while.

Taz glared. 'Well _what?'_

'What's _your _name? You seem real nice, and where I come from- Farm Planet, we like to introduce ourselves by tellin' each other what we're called. See, on my planet, your first name is…'

'Oh, _shut up!_' Taz cut him off, throwing her hands up in the air and trying not to wince at the twist of pain her newly-popped-into-place shoulder gave her. 'Who _cares_ about jour _estúpido_ planet? Ees probably destroyed by now! Why does it matter about my name? We're all stuck in here, movin' scrap metal for dese metal _hijos de puta_ until we fall and die!'

Tootsie just looked at her blankly for a moment, and then grinned goofily again. 'Well, dang, you seem real nice! We can be buddies! This here's a real shiny place, ain't it- you see that Megagirl over there, she's one be-yootiful woman!'

Taz couldn't stop her jaw from dropping. She didn't know which part of this bumbling hick's sentence needed correcting most urgently- nor which part of this whole incident she found more difficult to believe- that the _idiota_ could stay cheerful given the dire circumstances, that he thought she 'seemed real nice' after she had just insulted him, that he could possibly consider a robot 'beautiful'- or just that someone could even _b_ethat stupid! It was bad enough to have given up, to see everyone around you having given up too, but for someone to be so ignorant as to be _happy_ about his current situation- to actually _like_ the idea of being enslaved by the robots- it just made her want to run repeatedly into her own knife. Not that she still had it.

She tried to avoid Tootsie Noodles after that.

Which, incidentally, was what she was doing now.

A whole group of tin cans were assembled around them, prodding the humans and grating out orders about how to attach certain transistors to whatever the huge structure was they were building. Taz worked one-handed, occasionally letting her eyes run up and down the structure and wondering absently what it might be. Probably another weapon, she figured, and probably one that would expand the robots' empire and cement their new hold over the galaxy. It would just be _perfect_ to have the last of the starship rangers engaged in building something like that- to force them to assist the universal domination of their own enemies. It was just like the killer toasters to think like that.

Occasionally, as she fiddled with wires and screwdrivers, little bits of the Taz she once was would flitter up to the surface, and she'd find herself imagining what would happen if she were to use the spanner she was holding, take advantage of its heft and bash as much of this device in as she possibly could. Those _hijos de puta_ would boil with a synthetic rage, they'd probably kill her- but she could have at least done something noble in her last dying act- she could at least have stopped them from carrying out an evil plot one last time…

But then an image of Up flashed through her mind, and the gears in her brain skidded to a halt. Wasn't that what the two of them were trying to do, down on Qo'onoS? And look what happened to Up. Somewhere out there he was lying in two or more pieces. She tried to blink the mental picture away, frantically looking up, and immediately caught sight of Tootsie. Her last shred of hope drained away.

The robots didn't even need her for this project- not really. She, like all the others, was just a disposable source of labour, and if they did annihilate her for trying to rebel, there were pathetic idiots like Tootsie Noodles who would rebuild the device, completely unaware of what they were doing.

The Farm Planet fool saw her glance in his direction and gave her a goofy wave. 'Hi there, li'l girl!'

'Silence, hu-man!' the nearest robot thumped Tootsie.

'Oh, yeah, shhhh!' he put his finger to his lips in an exaggerated gesture, which Taz assumed was for her benefit. 'We gotta be real quiet,' the hick said in an overdramatic whisper, 'like in a li-bah-ry…'

'_Silence_, human!' snapped the robot again, and Taz looked away as scuffling sounds were heard. That _idiota estupido_ was going to land her in hot water if he kept going on like this- not to mention get himself killed. Not that she couldn't say she'd mind all that much if he did.

She shook her head and turned back to the task at hand.

Taz managed to keep her thoughts off anything for a good hour more or so, humming strange tunes in her mind to prevent her mind from latching onto any more painful memories of the G.L.E.E., or Up, or the fact that this was her life now. She jiggled wires until they clicked in their place, resisted the urge to retch every time a hulking metal supervisor clanked past, and kept a large section of her conscious thought focused on staying away from Tootsie Noodles, and pretending she hadn't seen when he sent a stupid, leering grin her way.

'Hey! Get your damn hands off me! Don't you know who I am? Haven't you heard o' me?'

The sudden shriek had the human slaves dropping what they were doing, watching in surprise and curiosity as two Megamen units entered, dragging with them a shouting, struggling young ranger.

New arrivals weren't big news in this place- Taz hadn't been here for more than five hours at most, and since then at least ten new survivors had been brought in- but they had all been like her- non-resistant, weak, resigned. They had merely been pushed in and immediately fallen into the same pattern as everyone else.

This boy was different- and Taz, despite her determination to not care, to keep watching her hands at work and not take any notice, found herself craning her neck to see the newcomer.

There was something oddly familiar about the boy- maybe something around the eyes, or the nose- she couldn't shake the feeling that she'd seen him somewhere before.

_Stop bein' _estúpido,_ Taz_, she told herself. _Jou've seen so many rangers aroun' de place- it doesn't mean anyt'ing._

But she still couldn't tear her eyes away. The guy was actually still fighting back- he looked terrible, like he'd been up all night on crack or weed or something worse, and was too weak to actually accomplish anything- but he was still trying. He was acting as though, perhaps, he still had something to fight for. Perhaps he still had a family out there, maybe friends-something worth holding on to. A tiny spark of hope flickered in Taz's chest. She was all but finished, a washed up failure of a once-tough Lieutenant- there was no hope of her regaining anything- but this _hombre_ might be able to keep going. Maybe if she tried to get him out, unleash him back on the destroyed city to do what little he could against the robots.

For the first time since she decided she wasn't alive, Taz felt a sense of purpose drifting towards her. It was only a small mission, a self-appointed one, but just because she was done for didn't mean everyone else was- and she could use what life she had left to make sure that someone else carried on- to ensure that out there, there was someone still getting the job done.

It all sounded very stupid, part of her tried to insist, why should she bother- but she ignored it. Having something to do was better than sitting around, aiding the robots and waiting for her own death.  
'You're nothin' but vacuum cleaners with legs, you know that?' the ranger was yelling now, and Taz put a hand over her mouth to hide her involuntary smirk from the supervisors. 'I don't answer to any damn robots- you guys should answer to _me!_ My dad…'

Whatever his dad was doing, or had done, or had said was lost to a strangled cry as a third robot glided up, brandishing a small, bleeping device and sticking it roughly into his neck. The ranger made a retching noise and flopped in his captors' arms.

'_Resistance is futile_,' one robot said, and the others picked up the drone, repeating it again and again so their words were indistinguishable from the echoes that bounced off the metal walls and crashed into each other. They let go of the ranger, but instead of falling to the ground in a heap, as Taz was expecting, he remained on his feet, his eyes glazed over.

'All-hail-Astroboy,' he said in a monotone, and then he shuffled mechanically over to the rest of the group and started sifting through pieces of metal as though there had never been any problem.

It took all of Taz's self-control not to let the NO! escape her mouth. The rage started to boil inside her. They were trying to take everything- it was bad enough they had taken Up, they had taken her, but they were trying to take her hope now, too. All they had to do is jab the boy with a miniscule chip and they could control him like a puppet, effectively erasing all his spirit, all his determination.

_I'll kill dem. I will kill dem._

Taz's ground her teeth, and then her body moved without her permission and she leapt to her feet.

'_Back to work, puny hu-man.'_

She felt a whip whizz past her but she dodged, her legs still moving. She had no plan, just a ridiculous desire to hurtle over to that guy and yank their controlling device from him.

'You will stop!'

Two pairs of metal hands clamped down on her arms, forcing her to her knees. Taz's temper was up- she wanted to get back to her feet and clobber them, but, the more cynical, rational part of her that had recently taken over told her, doing that wouldn't get her anywhere. All it would do would earn her one of those chips in her own neck, and then she'd be reduced to a remote-controlled slave, and those last shreds of the real Taz would be lost forever. So she didn't resist this time, she let them push her back towards their infernal device, she picked up her screwdriver and resumed her loathsome task.

But all the while, Taz's eyes kept flickering towards the robots, then to the young man. She needed to come up with some sort of plan.

_I will get dat t'ing off him if it's de last t'ing I do._

* * *

**Well, Taz and Junior are now in the same place, and Up's neeeearly done...**

**Sorry about things going so slowly, but every chapter brings us closer to Up and Taz reuiniting, I promise...**

**Also, forgive any inaccuracies in terms of Junior's tripping- I have never had pot, nor do I know anyone who has, so I have no idea what happens to people when they're high on it****. I had to look it up.**


	4. Of Junior, Tootsie, truths and doubts

**Well hello there. I don't know what to say, apart from that I hope this will be okay. Less POV changes in this one- but I really wanted to focus on Up and Taz at this point. More about the others will come later. Chapter Four, folks.**

* * *

**The empty hospital, ten miles from G.L.E.E. Headquarters**

**Fifty-four hours after the Apocalypse**

The piece Blim had 'forgotten' to attach resulted in four more hours' work, during which Specs, Krayonder and February huddled in a corner, as far from his madness as they could possibly get. Occasionally, when Specs had been brave enough to creep over and take a look, she'd been astounded by the progress.

When Doctor Blim had first suggested grafting Commander Up's body with robot parts (or rather, thrown the said robot parts around until everyone guessed what he was planning), she hadn't expected him to be able to pull it off, let alone do a halfway decent job. It was true, the pieces were all mismatched, so now half of him looked like a collage of several toys, but the wires and the veins had been intertwined in a complicated and clever looking way- the remaining lung, heart and part of his intestines encased in silicone, combined with the electrodes and several strange objects that substituted his missing organs and then shut away beneath a case of metal. A layer of skin- partly real, partly artificial spread across his chest, ending halfway across the metal but seeming to blend into it so it looked like someone had started to paint him and never finished the job.

Up's chest was rising and falling, the robotic half looking strange as it heaved unnaturally. His eyelids fluttered.

'Not long now!' Blim said, shooing Specs away and returning to his fifth set of 'finishing touches.'

Specs looked at her watch. It had certainly been a long time…and where the hell was Junior? He'd ducked out for a drag of his illicit supplies hours ago, and Specs could only hope he'd made it back home all right, and wasn't still wandering the streets stoned, getting himself noticed by the robots, or worse, drawing attention to the whereabouts of their hideout. When they got home- at whatever time that may be- she was going to give him a piece of her mind, and possibly flush his stash. He was risking exposing them, and all it would take would be one slip-up and they would all be doomed.

'Are you ready to see my genius unveiled?!' Blim called loudly, and the little gathering of rangers momentarily looked up, less than excited after about twelve decrees of a similar nature that had ended in them having to wait another hour.

'Dude, is this for real?' Krayonder demanded sleepily. 'We've been waitin' here for hours, man!'

Blim just gave him a look that said if Krayonder questioned his genius again, he might get some sort of edible substance thrown at his head.

'Hmm…if I turn this like so,' he was talking to himself again- he'd been doing that a lot this evening, ' and flick that…attach that…_sweet!'_

He proceeded to attack another device, sending more sparks flying and causing a buzzing noise to vibrate throughout the room as Up's chest was jerked with more vigour than before. With a final jolt, the body bounced up a few feet above the operating table, and then slumped back down.

There was a moment of silence.

And then, very slowly, Commander Up's eyes started to open.

Everyone held their breath. Blim pulled a Hershey's bar out of his pocket and stuffed it into his mouth to hide his own nervousness.

Up blinked once, twice, thrice. Krayonder and February let out dramatic gasps and held onto each other.

Blim was now gnawing his way through an entire pack of twizzlers, biting his nails down each time he reached the end of a licorice stick and didn't realise he'd finished.

Specs seemed to be the only one who was keeping calm- although inside she was shaking as much as the rest of them. She took a step towards the operating table.

Commander Up groaned a little. His shoulder twitched, then his mouth, jiggling his famous moustache, which they had only discovered was fake when Blim had pulled it off, dusted it with confectioner's sugar and replaced it. The fingers of his left hand jiggled.

And then he opened his mouth and spluttered, gasping for a proper breath as though he had just been pulled from a watery grave. He coughed and gulped, and then, with a terrible straining sound, forced himself into a sitting position, glancing around in confusion. He lifted his left arm and flexed his fingers.

Everyone watched him, unsure whether to approach him, to say anything.

Up was glancing down at his right shoulder, furrowing his brow as if something wasn't right. He seemed to be straining, and not having success in whatever he was trying to achieve.

There was a moment of tense silence.

Krayonder, who'd been rubbing his nose since Blim had showered him in sherbet a while ago, and now, at the most inopportune moment, the fine pink dust irritated him beyond the point of no return and he let out a loud sneeze.

Up's head whipped around.

'Wha- what's happened? Where am I? Who are you?' He sounded terrified, his voice high-pitched and all over the place- unrecognisable as the fearless Commander Up who had always torn apart robots with a fearsome hate and left everyone in awe of his ability to be the toughest soldier of them all. 'Taz- where's Taz?'

No-one knew quite what to say. Something suddenly flashed in Specs's brain. The red bandana. The Lieutenant she hadn't quite been able to remember. How were they going to tell him what had happened- and that Taz was probably dead.

'Why cain't I move my arm? Why cain't I move…' he tested his right leg experimentally, but couldn't make it budge even an inch. _'Why cain't I move anythin'?!'_ He was frantic now, his human arm yanking at his new prosthetic one, trying to make it move.

The rest of the rangers turned to Blim.

'Hold onto your _buttons,_ it's only temporary!' he said, shrugging off their accusing looks and at the same time somehow producing a pack of chocolate buttons. 'You can't expect him to be instantly used to them! These things take time!' He gave a nervous giggle, which became a bout of hysterical laughter, and soon he was twirling off into the next room, his maniacal cackling echoing eerily through the deserted corridors.

It looked to Specs like Up was wondering what kind of nightmare he'd landed in.

'Er, Commander,' she said, stepping forward slowly, cautiously, not wanting to startle him with any sudden movement, 'do you remember anything?'

'I…uh…' she was right in front of him now, gazing down at him in concern as he struggled to think. 'I…Qo'onoS…me an' Taz- we were fightin' together…where is she? What happened? Did the backup come? They finished off the robots, didn't they?'

Specs bit her lip. How did she put this? How did she explain that they'd lost? It was hard enough to admit it to herself, without having to try and convince someone else.

'An'..how come I cain't move? What's happened to my right side?'

'You…er…'

Up's eyes suddenly widened. 'I can remember pain- real pain- agony…that sonovabitch Optimus Prime…' he looked up at Specs in shock. 'He hit me! With a circular buzz saw! Sliced me like a string bean- I should be dead! Am I dead?'

Specs sat down beside him, picking up his right arm and holding it up for him to see. 'Commander, you- we- Doctor Blim has managed to find a way to save your life…unfortunately it involved a lot of prosthesis.'

He frowned, uncomprehending.

'We couldn't save your right side, Commander- we had to substitute it with…' she wondered how gently she could phrase this, 'mechanical parts.'

'Mechanical parts…' Up echoed quietly, mulling the words over in his mind and trying to work out just exactly what she was inferring. He looked down at his right arm, running his left hand over it. 'Mechanical parts…no…._no…no, no…I'm- I'm…'_

Specs winced. It was beginning to dawn on him. They could all only hope he would take it well. He was famed for being tough, for being able to handle anything- but this was something completely out of left field- and the idea that you were now composed of the same matter as your deadliest foes…it was enough to frighten anyone. She just prayed he'd remain calm- any hysterics and they were bound to be detected.

Up was silent for a moment.

And then his horrified shriek resounded throughout the entire building.

'_I'M A ROBOT!'_

* * *

**Robot Command Base, formerly G.L.E.E. Headquarters  
Two days and nine hours after the Apocalypse**

Taz's eyes were beginning to shut every so often, and there was nothing she could do to stop them. She didn't want to sleep- even if the robots would have allowed it (it must be long past midnight by now, and still the toasters were pushing them to keep working, smug in the fact that they didn't need sleep)- if she did, there would be too many terrible visions to play out in her mind, too many feelings of hopelessness and despair to come crashing down on her as soon as she let her guard down. But even the toughest of soldiers- and Taz could hardly call herself one of them any more- couldn't keep awake forever, and so her eyelids continued to droop, and her brain became fuzzier and fuzzier, her co-ordination deteriorating with every passing moment.

She wasn't alone. All around her, people were slumping against the unfinished structure, tools slipping from their hands, dozing off for split seconds before their overseers jolted them awake and grated out more orders.

Was this their plan, then? To just keep working them to death? Well, they wouldn't have slaves for that long if they kept this up. Another few days and they would have to finish off their damn device themselves.

The thought brought a smirk to her face- serve the tin cans right if they'd all be stuck with all their own dirty work to do. But just as quickly, the smile faded. If the last of the humans died, there would be no-one to oppose the robots. They didn't _need_ her and the rest of them, they were just using them to humiliate them for losing- if everybody died, they could easily finish the device themselves and use it for- well, who knew what. She might not be able to stop them herself, and especially not single-handedly, but Taz was determined to remove that chip from that other ranger's ear and put him back on his feet, so that _someone_ at least could get back at those metal _bastardos._ So she elbowed herself, forced herself to stay awake, each time telling her _just a little longer,_ and trying to think of how she could get across to the poor kid and help him out.

Glancing around, she waited until the overseers closest to her were facing the other way, and then got up from her position, scooting round the worker to her right and ducking back down just as a Megaman unit clanked in their direction.

She scowled and tried to keep herself from making a noise of discomfort- her knees ached terribly after crouching for so long, and then rising so abruptly.

_Well, if dat's de worst dat happens to jou, Taz,_ she told herself, _consider jourself _afortunada- _now stop bein' soft and get on wid it._

The young, chipped ranger was about four places down from her, the only one of the group not showing signs of fatigue, still working away as quickly as he had been when he'd first come under the influence of their controlling technology. If she didn't sort him out soon, Taz reckoned, he would be the first to go- he'd collapse out of sheer physical exhaustion. Even then they'd probably make the body keep working.

The sudden mental image this idea brought forced Taz to throw her effort into getting up and making another dash for it. She made it around two people this time before she had to throw herself down, and hastily scrabbled around for a screwdriver, appearing busily engaged as a second Megaman clomped his way around the structure. She felt a pair of glowing eyes on her back and steeled herself, attaching a transistor to the machine with calm precision, hoping desperately it wouldn't notice she was panting.

If it would just go away! She was so close now- so incredibly close, and the stupid mechanical idiot was in her way. The old Taz would surely have torn it to pieces for that- if she hadn't already just because it existed.

'_All humans will stop and stand.'_

The command caught her by surprise, as did the sudden dimming of the lights. The former rangers were plunged into near blackness, only able to see by the glowing of the assorted robots' eyes, and a few little green bulbs attached to the device they had been building. The group struggled to their feet, moans rippling through the lot of them, at the pain this effort brought.

'_You will sleep. Work resumes in- four- hours. Attempts to escape or sabotage the project will result in death.'_

A wave of sighs went through the group, people immediately collapsing to the floor left, right and centre. No-one had the energy- let alone the guts- to attempt any sort of revolt. The robots melted into a formation and marched out of the chamber one by one. The metal door slid shut, and the sound of several clicks, bolts and mechanical locks could be heard.

And then silence.

Taz squinted through the darkness, trying to use the weak illumination given off by the half-done device to get her bearings. All she could make out were shadows and lumps.

_Mierda._ This was the only opportunity she had to get to that ranger, and she couldn't see him. She stumbled about, crashing into spare parts and cussing as she clutched her throbbing foot.

'Psst!'

Taz jumped at the hiss, turning around in time for a tiny torch to shine in her face. She blinked ferociously, trying to vanish the red blotches that had burned onto her vision.

' 'Scuse me, li'l girl…'

Oh, _gran._ Of all the people she could have run into, it had to be _him._

'What de hell do jou want, Tootsie?' she growled.

'Uh, it sure is dark in here,' he said, smiling goofily at her in a way which she got the idea was meant to be amiable. 'But I got me this light doo-hickey when I first came to earth- them friendly shiny gents didn't find it, 'cause I hid it in my…'

'Okay, _okay,_' Taz said, waving her hands at him before he could go on. 'Seriously- I don' wanna know, _¿vale?_ What are jou tryin' to say?'

'Well, ma'am, I don't like all this darky-ness, 'cause, see, where I come from- Farm Planet- there's farms there you know- we…'

'Get-to-de-point!' Taz snarled, frustrated.

'The dark makes me scared!' Tootsie Noodles whined, and his voice made Taz want to bash his face in. She couldn't stand people who were so cowardly they felt the need to whinge about their fears to those stronger than them, and he was getting in her way. 'I thought maybe, 'cause you're my real nice buddy,' (the Hispanic girl rolled her eyes) 'we could stay up, and I could tell you about where I come from, and you…'

'No!' the farmer didn't seem to realise this was a rejection, and continued grinning inanely as she went on. 'No! I am tryin' to get on wid somet'ing important- and I do not want jou screwin' it up!'

She turned away from him, before it hit her like a ton of bricks. She was passing up the answer to her prayers.

She turned back to him, reaching out and grabbing the torch from his grasp. Now to find that ranger.

Taz flicked the little light across the room, passing it over each of the slumbering shapes. _No, no,_ _idiota, idiota, no…there!_

Apparently the chip in the young man's neck meant the robots had total control of him- every spoken word became an order he couldn't resist. Unlike the others, who had either fallen down into their state of unconsciousness or were wrestling with the metal floor in order to find a comfortable enough position to sleep, he had merely stopped functioning on his feet and was standing there in a kind of limbo that, it she was honest, frightened Taz a little bit. It was more than she could take- she couldn't wait another second to get over there, to get that thing out of him.

She took two steps across the room, and Tootsie let out a shriek from behind her.

'Oh…ma'am-where you goin'? Why're you leavin' me all alone? In the dark!'

A pair of arms grabbed her round the shoulders from behind, and Taz groaned.

'Where are you takin' my light doohickey? Can-can I come?'

'If jou come, will jou _shut up?'_

Tootsie nodded vigorously. 'Oh, I will…I'll be real quiet…like a sheep!'

_Like…a…sheep…_Taz bit down on her tongue to stop herself saying something insulting. 'Come along, den- but don' say another word!' she whipped round and held up one finger to the confused farmer's mouth, which had started to open.

Taz picked her way through the random dotting of sleeping humans, using the little torch as a guide. Every so often she would step on a hand or someone's hair and she would jump back, bumping into Tootsie, who insisted on staying close enough behind her that they were practically touching.

'Li'l girl?' he whispered into the approximate location of her ear, sending prickly shivers down her neck, 'what're we doin'?'

Taz sighed. 'You see dat _hombre_ over dere?' she held up the flashlight and waved the beam over her target. 'We gotta get to him, okay? But de _robotas_ are not to know.'

'Oh- you mean like a game? That sounds fuuun…I'm real good at games!'

'_Shhh!'_

She crept on, trying with all her might not to let him get to her. She was almost there now, just a few more steps.

Taz gave in to her own impatience and sprinted the rest of the way, taking great strides and tearing up the floor beneath her feet. She leapt on the young ranger, running her hands up his neck in search of the device.

It was just below his ear, a nasty, sharp little thing that blipped quietly and had such a vile, disgusting, killer-robot aura that the once Lieutenant was loath to touch it. She retched a little, but nonetheless took hold of the little device between her thumb and forefinger and gave it a tug. It didn't budge. Wrapping as many fingers around it as was physically possible, Taz yanked at the chip with all her might, not letting go until she felt it shift. She pulled, wincing at the sensation of metal sliding through flesh. She'd seen worse, had worse done to _her_ during her life, but this just made her sick.

She was holding the flashlight right up to the ranger's neck, making sure she had a good grip on the thing and that she didn't screw up and irreparably damage him- and with the aid of this small amount of light, she could see that it was embedded deeper than she'd originally imagined, two thin spikes protruding from it sticking down into his skin. Taz's hatred for the robots increased again.

Channelling that hatred into her fingers, she tugged once more, grunting with the effort, and pulling it free with a jolt that sent her stumbling back into Tootsie again.

'Gah!'

The scream that issued from the now-free young man was loud enough to wake the dead, not to mention the rest of the humans, and certainly not to mention the robots who had super-senses and didn't sleep to boot. Taz instantly leapt back up and grabbed hold of him, clapping one hand over his mouth and dragging him down to the floor.

'Shhh, _idiota!'_ she muttered in his ear. 'Jou need to keep quiet- do jou know where we are?'

He gave one jerky nod, and she released him. The ranger gasped for air, panting and shuddering. 'Wh-what the hell just happened? I remember the robots brought me in here- and then…well, it's all a bit…_blurred. _ And not in the good, pot kinda way.'

Taz gave him a strange look, but answered nonetheless, holding out her hand so he could get an eyeful of the little contraption that had had complete control over him.

'Is that a…hey! How dare they! How dare they do that to _me!_' he paused, looking at Taz and giving her a slightly-charming smile. 'My dad is…' his smile faltered, 'uh, _was_ the Head of the whole Galactic League, you know. Perhaps you've heard of me- I'm Junior.'

Now Taz knew why he was familiar. She had seen him around, skulking about the superior officers' quarters, lurking in the shadows at every meeting, and usually playing some sort of hand-held video game rather than listening or contributing. She'd never heard his name, though- it had never occurred to her that their clever, and frighteningly strange leader had ever had a son.

She shrugged at him. 'I've heard of jour dad.'

'Hi there, my name is Tootsie Noodles!' her companion bawled far too loudly and cheerily, shaking Junior's hand with vigour. 'And this here's my pal- I don't know her name, but where I come from, Farm Planet, your first name is what you do, and your second name is what you like. So I like to think she's called Shouting Shouter.'

Taz glared.

Junior seemed to find this amusing, laughing in a hushed, obnoxious manner until Taz turned her seething stare on him. He swallowed, and, seeming to remember the seriousness of the situation, managed to wipe the smirk off his face.

'_Me llamo _ Taz. I am-was-a Lieutenant under Commander Up. And I wanna help jou- where did-'she was going to ask where he'd come from, what he'd been doing that had gotten him caught, and explain how she admired him for standing up for himself when in the hands of the tin cans- but she didn't get that far, because as soon as Taz said her name, coupled with Up's, a look of shock and recognition had come over Junior's features, and he'd interrupted.

'Commander Up, did you say?'

'_Sí_.'

'But I- I _know _you! You're not just any damn Lieutenant- you're _the_ Lieutenant! You and Commander Up were…were a _team_!' he smacked his forehead. 'How come I didn't see it before? You had a red bandana, didn't you?'

'_Sí,'_ Taz said again, reaching up absently to touch her forehead. She hadn't really thought about that- it was only now he'd mentioned it she'd even stopped to think about its presence- or absence. 'Why does-'

'I should've known! I should have known when I saw it-' he leaned forward, gripping hold of Taz's shoulders and shaking them a little. 'Commander Up- I've seen him!'

She shouldn't ask- she knew she shouldn't, but she asked anyway. She didn't want to know, but her mouth seemed to decide it didn't care about that. 'His body…was it…' Taz couldn't even finish the sentence. She wasn't entirely sure how- wasn't sure of just what words she wanted to express, but some little part of her hopelessly wished he could give her some comforting news- like that maybe he was still in one piece, (even though that was impossible) or that he appeared to have died painlessly (equally impossible.)

'I've more than seen him, Lieut-uh, I'm just gonna call you Taz, it's easier, and there's no G.L.E.E- you see, we went down to Qo'onoS…'

'We?' Taz cut in. There were more of them? A resistance, perhaps? Another flicker of hope started to burn away in her chest, and she tried to keep her focus on it, and not on the dampening the mention of Up's body was bringing simultaneously.

'Yeah- there are five of us- we sorta found each other after the war, and we were goin' around getting supplies and stuff- and we found him. And he was holding your bandana- only I didn't know what it was.'

She nodded slowly, just trying to process all this.

'And- we saw him breathing- Taz, he was still alive!'

If Taz had been holding anything, she would have dropped it. '_What?!'_

* * *

He hadn't said what she thought he had just said. He couldn't have. She must be going crazy, because it sounded to her as if he had just said Commander Up- her friend, her Up, was _still alive._

And that she knew to be impossible.

It was Taz's turn to grab hold of _him,_ grasping him by the front of his shirt. 'What did jou just say?'

'He's alive- well, he was when I last checked- in a pretty gruesome mess though, I'm tellin' you- only half of him left. But we brought 'im back with us- what was left of him, and we took him to Doctor Blim- do you remember him?'

Taz did, vaguely- the only person madder than Doctor Space-Claw, who had a reputation for making the most twisted of abominations and throwing candy all over the place for no apparent reason, but she couldn't think why he was making an appearance in this anecdote.

'Well, we took Up to the hospital, and Blim was gonna fix him up- prosthetics and stuff, you know- give him a new body.' He looked Taz straight in the eye, saying the last words slowly. '_Heal_ him.'

She said nothing. She couldn't. Her mind was finding it difficult to process a response. She wasn't even sure if she believed him. It was all too much to take in- Up being alive?

That was just too much to hope for.

Taz discreetly moved her hand up to her forearm and pinched herself, just in case she had fallen asleep and they hadn't rescued Junior at all, and none of this had happened. It hurt, but it didn't do anything to her state of consciousness.

'He can't be alive, Hunior,' she said, 'I _saw_ him_ die!_' she felt herself choke up, and didn't stop herself. She was kidding herself if she thought she could pretend to be a decent tough ranger. It didn't matter if she cried a little bit. 'I saw him get cut in half- and den just after dat we lost, and…'

'No! No, Taz, he's still alive, and we're fixin' him up, and we're gonna…'

'Stop it- dis is _not funny, _Hunior!'

'Taz!' Junior shook her again, and she would have punched him but his words had hit her hard. 'Don't you see- this is fate! It's gotta be- he wouldn't let go of your red thingy- if we could get you back to him you could help him recover…I reckon that was the only reason he wasn't dead, that he was hangin' onto it…'

'Hunior, _stop it_,' Taz ground out through her teeth, 'what are jou, deranged?'

'I'm not deranged!' he drew back, more than a little bit offended. 'I'm dead serious!'

'If jou're not deranged, den how come jou got caught by de robots?'

'Well,' he shuffled about uncomfortably, 'I…may have been doin' drugs out in the open…'

Taz thwacked her head against her palms repeatedly. Well, that explained it, then. The man was delusional. He'd gotten on a high and seen things that weren't real. She knew Up couldn't have possibly been alive. Junior was ridiculous, and she told him as much.

'Hey! Hey, now wait a minute! I may have been a bit careless and stupid sometimes- but I was completely sober when we found Commander Up! And when I show you, you'll have to believe me.'

She frowned. 'De hell is dat supposed to mean? _"When jou show me"-_ jou're just as _loco_ as jour_ padre!_'

Junior looked at her as if it was obvious. 'Well…when we get outta here…that's what we're gonna do, right?'

Taz said nothing.

'I thought you saved me from that robot chip because, well- you're Lieutenant Taz, and you always got a plan, and we were gonna escape and start fightin' back…' he was discouraged by her silence. 'That's right, isn't it? Isn't that right, Taz? Taz?'

Taz continued to sit in silence. Was that what they were going to do? She hadn't considered trying to escape from the fist of iron the robots held them in. She'd pretty much accepted the world had ended, that it was over, that all she could possibly do was perhaps help Junior, as someone with more remaining fighting spirit than she, to get out there and agitate the robots occasionally. She hadn't thought of 'fighting back', as Junior had put it, nor did she know if she actually could. She didn't know if she had the energy to any more. She felt all of her had been drained on Qo'onoS, and it wouldn't be easy to refill her.

And what about this crazed idea that Up was alive? She wanted to believe it, she really did, but that seemed like too much to ask for. That just seemed like the hopeless sort of illusion someone clung to when they were past all _real_ hope. Maybe Junior wasn't as spirited as she'd thought- maybe he was just mad, and she should have left him how he was. Because now he was putting thoughts into her head- thoughts and ideas she didn't want any more. She'd given up, and he was trying to get her to take up her sword again.

She turned to him, about to tell him that he could get stuffed, that he could try to escape and probably get killed if he wanted to, but she wasn't going to do anything, as there wasn't any point. And she did not- most certainly did _not_ want to go out there with her hopes all up that Up might be there, only to have them dashed again, because there was no way he could be alive- there just wasn't.

But as soon as she opened her mouth to let him know all this, a completely different set of words tumbled out.

'Okay. Let's go for it.'

* * *

**Sorry if Junior seems...a little OOC in that he's not evil- although that may well change (ooh, spoilers...actually forget I said that). Anyway, chapter five coming as soon as I can manage- uni is really starting to pile on the work, and it's only week 3 of the semester :P But I will get round to getting it done.**


	5. The red bandana

**A bit of a different format for this chapter- just focussing on one storyline, for the time being. More on the others next time. Also, ye be warned, beware the inordinate use of the word 'like' in the Februaryspeak. And a rather shameless Doctor Who reference.**

* * *

**Earth**

**A base a few miles from where G.L.E.E. Headquarters used to stand**

**Three days after the Apocalypse**

The sobbing hadn't stopped since they'd returned home. It filled their secret base, and Specs didn't know which was worse- Blim's overenthusiasm with his experiments or Commander Up's very noisy demonstration of his despair. He'd locked himself in one of the four little rooms they had control of, refusing to come out and howling his human heart out so loudly that Specs thought, once again, of how unfair it was that everyone they discovered was more interested in drawing attention to themselves than helping out with practical things. Which reminded her- it had been hours since they'd seen any sign of Junior, and she was beginning to get rather worried.

Krayonder was sitting on the battered sofa, dramatically covering his ears and rolling his eyes. Specs stepped over to him, feeling a bit awkward as she sat down beside him, although for the life of her she couldn't think why.

'Where's Junior?' she asked. 'Did you see him come home?'

'Nope,' Krayonder said, 'haven't seen him since he went out to get stoned yesterday…he'll probably be back.' He didn't seem at all concerned about their companion's absence. 'More importantly, what are we gonna do about _that?'_ he jerked his head in the direction of Up's closed door. 'All he's done since we brought him home is sit in there, cuh-rying about being a robot! Makes me almost wish we hadn't saved him now!'

Specs was aghast. 'Krayonder! That's a terrible thing to say!' She didn't let him know that he had just voiced the opinion she was trying desperately not to have. Oh, she didn't want to have left him there to die, but she couldn't hide her disappointment. Commander Up was the toughest ranger around- his brilliance was legend, and she had expected he would be a willing volunteer to aid their cause- to help them snatch things from under the robots' grasp- look for more survivors, maybe even start a little resistance. Maybe it would take him a while to get used to moving his robot limbs- she had accepted that- but he had merely collapsed into an emotional puddle and refused to get out. They'd had to cover his mouth while dragging him home, in the hope that his wailing wouldn't reach the robots' detectors.

'Poor man,' February said, leaning against the arm of the couch and shutting her eyes. 'It must be so sad- to not have a real body. He'll never look good in his Commander's clothes again!'

'Somehow I think that's the least of his worries,' Specs said, trying to withhold the disgusted look she was desperate to throw the schientist's way.

'You'd think he'd be grateful.' Blim had taken Up's distress as a personal insult. He sat on the windowsill, arms folded, gazing out through the dirty glass and tutting every now and then. 'More than _half_ of him is still human- he's lucky even to have that!'

He held up a half-eaten chocolate bar, and everyone exchanged glances.

'You call that a candy pun?' Krayonder said. 'That was just _lame_, man- you're losin' your touch.'

'Well I'm _angry_,' Blim retorted. 'How am I supposed to think of decent clever quips when nobody appreciates my work?!' He turned back to the window, attempting to look calm, but his emotion soon got the better of him and he flounced off into his workshop to have a cry.

Specs rolled her eyes. 'Not another one! Doesn't anyone realise the implications of being the last humans alive? We need to try and save our planet- and everyone's just having temper tantrums!'

'And you look on the verge of one yourself,' Krayonder said, to the bespectacled woman's great annoyance.

'We need to talk to Commander Up,' Specs said, 'if we could just remind him what's at stake here…'

'Forget it, man!' Krayonder waved his hand. 'He's useless! He's not Commander Up any more- no more than I am!'

The sobbing in the next room increased in volume.

'You're such a dick!' February stomped on his foot. 'That's so mean! He heard you!'

She jumped up, striding across the room, her bob swishing.

'Where are you going?'

'To cheer him up!' the schience officer nodded determinedly.

'Good luck,' Krayonder and Specs muttered as one.

* * *

The tapping on his door was so faint Up didn't notice it at first. He was too busy wallowing in his own self-pity, letting his tears fall into the raggy pillow, occasionally pounding the old bed he'd monopolised with his good arm and leg.

'Commander Up?'

Up sniffed loudly and didn't answer.

'Can I come in?' came a soft, gentle voice. Up was inclined to ignore her, but at the last minute he reached out with his left arm and flicked the lock. The wooden door swung open, and an attractive, but not so intelligent looking blonde girl stood in the doorway, smiling down at him.

'What're _you_ so happy about?'

She came over to him and sat down on the bed. 'I know you're feeling sad right now,' she started.

'_Brilliant_ observation, ranger,' he grumbled. Her dumb remark had miffed him enough to stop his tears, but the thick cloud of depression still sat all around him like a fog, and he wanted to just sink down through the mattress and disappear.

'Do you wanna talk about it?'

Up considered. What was there to talk about? He'd woken up from a blackout, after the most indescribable agony ever to have been experienced, only to find that it was all for nothing- they'd lost the Robot Wars, Taz was probably dead and he was a robot. All the times he'd fought against them, risking life and limb for years- practically all his adult life, he'd led others into a fight against them and so many of them had died- all of that and now he was practically one of them.

He hadn't listened to the others' attempts to explain that he wasn't a robot- he was still more man than machine, and he could still do so much good. Fat chance of that. He could barely move, and even if he did get the hang of 'his new limbs' he wasn't sure he wanted to use them. He'd boycott them. He'd just lie here forever, until he died.

Which probably wouldn't take that long.

No, he didn't want to talk about anything. He just wanted everyone to leave him alone and be miserable in peace. With great difficulty, he shifted onto his side, facing away from the girl.

'My name is February,' the girl said. Up didn't care what her name was. 'You know, like the month, but a person!'

'I'm Up,' he said expressionlessly. 'You know, like the direction, but a person.' She didn't seem to pick up the dark tone of mockery in his voice.

'See, we have something in common!' she squealed, and he clenched his eyes shut. This idiot was giving him a headache- and he could do without that on top of all the other crap that had just ruined his life.

Again he refused to respond.

'We have lots of things in common, actually,' February said, though the Commander highly doubted that. 'You're sad 'cause, like, you think you're not good enough, huh?'

Not quite, but she was getting warmer anyhow. This girl, who he'd labelled 'stupid' seconds after meeting, had suddenly gone up a little in his estimation, merely because she'd actually made a remark this time that didn't make him want to rip the hair off her head.

Not good enough, hey? It was worse than that. He was…he was…

'I don't deserve to live!' he gurgled, his voice like mush, the tears suddenly bursting forth again. February rather awkwardly patted his shoulder as he let out another round of sobs, burying his face in the pillow that was fast becoming his new best friend.

'You know, I used to feel like that.' She lowered her voice. 'I don't tell people this story, but you're kinda upset, so…'

_Kinda upset?_ His life wasn't worth living any more, for goodness' sake!

She leaned over him, the smell of the bleach in her hair reaching his nose. 'I never really graduated from the Academy. I say I'm a schience officer, but I never got qualified, not really- but I mean _how _could they expect me to graduate if they kept making me do dumb tests all the time?'

'_Tragic,_' Up muttered.

'And I couldn't pass any of those tests, because I didn't read the books! But they were, like, super hard…'

'Your point?'

'Well, everyone thought I was a slut- I mean, a _dumb_ slut, which was totally not fair…'

'No offense, November, but I don't see how this has anythin' to do with…anythin'.'

'February,' the girl insisted.

'Fine, _February_,' Up spat. 'Look, kid, I appreciate yer attempts to help, but they ain't gonna work.'

'Well, I'm just telling you, I've had some rough times too!'

'Yeah,' Up said. 'You were never a robot, though.'

* * *

Up must have slept after February left, because when he opened his eyes again the room was significantly darker and his arm had pins and needles from laying on it. He lifted it and shook it.

Slowly, experimentally, he sat up, and concentrated with all his might on his right leg. He strained, looking at it with fury, willing it to do as he asked. And then, almost imperceptibly, it moved an inch. He tried again, this time with his arm, and shifted it over to his lap. Bent and unbent his fingers. Shrugged his shoulder.

This was hopeless. He wasn't only a robot- he was a damned useless one at that.

Up flopped backwards onto the bed again. Surprising, he thought, but the tears hadn't started up again. He'd expected them when he looked down at his hand, which looked so deceptively human, and realised it was all a lie. He'd expected them when he'd flexed his toes, only to find he didn't have any, just a foot-shaped piece of machinery.

But still they didn't come. Up wondered if he'd damaged his tear ducts, or else completely worn them out. He was still crying inside, even if it didn't show.

He knew February was trying to help when she came in earlier, no matter how much worse it made him feel, but he'd all but ignored her, refused to accept anything she was saying or listen to any suggestions. He'd wanted her gone.

Now, though, when he was all alone in the dark, he sort of wanted her back again. It was lonely in here with just his thoughts and his half-robot body to taunt him.

He opened his mouth and, choking back the phlegm that had gathered in his mouth, croaked out her name.

* * *

'I'll see you, Doctor Blim, and I'll raise you ten.' Krayonder flicked a handful of space-dollar notes onto the growing pile of money in the centre of the floor. Blim had come out of his sulk about an hour ago, but, unlike Specs, neither he nor Krayonder could be less interested in picking up any more supplies or thinking up how they might escape this planet and find a robot-free world.

'It's too late in the day, man!' Krayonder had whined, slumping down onto the floor. 'Give us a break!'

And then promptly dodged as a KitKat had flown past his head.

Now, whilst Specs tried to pick up a reading on Junior on her spectrometer- she really was getting worried about that moron- the others were sat playing poker with written-on mintie wrappers instead of cards, and were willing to bet everything they owned, seeing as money no longer held any value.

'My hand is superb,' Blim said smugly, 'so I'll raise you a_ hundred grand!_' he tossed the chocolate bar with the same name onto the pile, and Krayonder's jaw dropped.

'That's cheatin'! You can't bet with candy! You're out, man, you lose!' he snatched up the pile of money, flicking the Hundred Grand bar back across the floorboards. 'I don't even _like_ these!'

Blim looked horrified, as if the idea that anyone could not like candy in any shape or form was unheard of.

'This game is no fun!' he said, flouncing off to sulk again.

Specs rolled her eyes and went back to peering at her spectrometer. The device gave her a good idea of what was going on in, say, the five mile radius around their little hideout, but she couldn't get a reading on Junior at all. He wasn't anywhere to be found.

_That little snot is really putting himself at risk…_

She would have to take action soon. If Junior didn't turn up by sunset, they were going to have to go and look for him.

The room had gone quiet now Blim had tantrumed out of the poker game. The only sounds that could be heard were the faint rustle of the paper as Krayonder packed up the remains of the cards, and the occasional sigh as February stared into space.

She opened her mouth to announce her decision, but a faint moaning noise had them all holding their breaths.

Up had been quiet for a while now, but they had heard enough of his noises of pain and despair earlier that this shouldn't be news to them. There was something about this particular cry, though, that sounded strange…different. Specs could have sworn he'd been trying to _say_ something…

The moan came again, floating under the door, and all three occupants of the room strained to hear what he was saying.

'_F-ebru-ary…'_

The schience officer's eyes went wide.

'Did he just call me?'

Krayonder nodded slowly. 'Go to him, man…go talk to him before he starts cryin' again!'

February got to her feet and started toward the door. The other two watched her, unsure what to think. From within the room Up had domiciled, there was another moan, and everyone watched with wide eyes as the blonde girl took another step.

And then, in a sudden movement that had Specs and Krayonder jumping, she turned away from the door and ran across the room.

'What are you doing?' Specs demanded, as February neared the sofa and began pulling the cushions off the seat, pushing her off as she did so.

'Aha!' she yelled triumphantly, waving something over her head that the others couldn't see, and then skipping into Up's room and clicking the door shut behind her.

The others just started after her.

* * *

It took Up three tries before he called loudly enough for February to hear. He listened to the quick, creaking footsteps that resounded around the next room before his door swung open and she stood in the doorway, the early evening light hitting her blonde hair like a halo.

February stepped toward him, smiling down at him in a patronising way that he normally would have hated. He couldn't complain about it now, though. He couldn't complain about anything. He didn't deserve to live, let alone make a fuss about his living conditions.

Except for being a robot, of course. Because no-one and nothing could ever make that right.

'Are you okay?' the schience officer asked, sitting down beside him as he used one arm to pull himself into an upright position.

'Do I look okay to you?'

'Um…' she seemed to _actually_ not understand the concept of rhetorical questions, and after at least ten seconds' worth of furrowing her brow and humming, Up cut her off.

'I just wanted to talk is all,' he said, and she nodded.

'So, what do you wanna talk about? TV? Shopping? I got this cute new…' Up's look succeeded in fading her jabbering into silence. Honestly, no wonder this girl didn't properly graduate from the Academy! She had about as many brains as a piece of walnut cake.

They were quiet for a little while.

'So,' Up said after a pregnant pause, 'they tell me we lost the Robot Wars.'

'Yep,' said February.

'How the hell did that happen?'

'_Well,_ and I wasn't there, but I just, like, _heard_ most of this stuff,' she was flapping her hands about with every word. Up tried not to be annoyed. 'But, like, that planet where they found you-'

'-Qo'onos.'

'Yeah, Kroners, anway, 'cause, like, that was meant to be the final battle, I think, and so you guys were holding out up there, but then they sent these robots secretly down to earth while everyone was distracted.'

Up nodded. Made sense. 'Go on.'

'So, like, these freakish robots came and killed Doctor Space-Claw, and then they took over Headquarters- they got into the Academy too. And they were so gross- I mean, like, not even normal robot gross- they looked like giant pepper pots with eye stalk thingies, and they started firing green lights and everyone was dying. I escaped, 'cause my graduating class were all training, but I was totally having a manicure…'

Up thought it ironic that all the more qualified rangers were killed whilst training to defend themselves against these very robots- while February, so unsuitable for any position in the G.L.E.E., should survive merely because she was off being vain and lazy. He said nothing, though. If he had any kind of friend in this horrible reality it was her, and he didn't want to tick her off and end up alone in a world where he was a robot and nothing was as it should be. He didn't think he could handle that.

'I got out,' February went on, the story having morphed into her adventures rather than an account of how the Robot Wars were lost, 'and everything was gone- the whole city, and there were all these disgusting bodies everywhere, and I was totally gonna puke, and then Junior found me and brought me here.'

Up frowned. 'Junior?'

'Yeah, you haven't met him- he hasn't come home yet, but he…'

'You don't mean Space-Claw's good-fer-nothin' son, do ya?'

'I know he's a bit of a dick,' she said, 'and he smokes weed a lot, and gets us in danger nearly all the time, but he…he…' she didn't seem to know just how to finish that sentence, 'he's, un, kinda nice, sometimes. And he _did_ find you on Boners!'

Up tutted. 'Boners' indeed. Way to remind him of what else his injury had apparently cost him.

She appeared to be about to say something else, her irises sliding upward and around as though debating it, and then, very awkwardly she brought her hand out from behind her back.

Clenched in her fist was something red, the corner of which was poking out from between her fingers. Up squinted at it, trying to work out just what it was, and why it invoked such a strange sensation in the pit of his stomach.

'I brought you something,' February said tentatively, 'Specs said you were holding it when they found you- you know, when you were all icky with your guts hanging out- anyway, like, I don't know if it'll cheer you up, or help or something, but…'

She opened her hand and held it out to him.

Crumpled in her palm lay a half-destroyed strip of fabric, the ends lacerated and raggy- but one Up would recognise anywhere, in any condition, and which immediately sent painful images of its usual wearer flying past his eyes.

He reached out, taking the bandana from her, ruffling the material between his fingers.

'Taz…'

'Who's Taz?' February asked.

Who was Taz? _Who was Taz?_ Only the one person who had meant more to him than any weapon, mission or feeling of glory ever could. The only human being he could honestly say he cared about, back when he was a sensational Commander and the world was at his feet.

'She was my Lieutenant,' he said. 'My best friend in the world. Me an' Taz- we were like _that._' He crossed two fingers of his left hand and held them up for her to see, the tears once again starting to prick in his eyes. He'd been so preoccupied with his own condition, so busy wallowing in self-pity that it hadn't really hit him until now.

Taz was probably dead. Somewhere in the rubble of their final standoff on Qo'onoS, her body was probably lying, mangled and starting to decay.

He was smacked in the face with the most terrible mental image of this scene, and he broke down, the sobs erupting from him, tremendous hiccups accompanied by whatever water was still left in his body to be cried out.

'Taz,' he rasped, 'my poor Taz…'

February didn't really know what to do. She'd never been good at comforting people- not when they were in as much despair as this, so she just patted his back, not saying anything, hoping as he leaned forward and cried into her shoulder that he wasn't going to stain her only clean set of clothes.

'Did they…did they see her?' Up asked at length, sniffling as he sat up again and looked her in the eye. He didn't want to hear the answer- didn't want to know, but he couldn't bring himself _not_ to enquire about it. At least, if he heard the words it would all be final. 'Did they see her body?'

'Um, I don't think so,' she replied, to his astonishment, 'they only found you. You and…that red thingy.'

Another set of horrible thoughts paraded through his mind. Taz so disintegrated she no longer had a physical form. Taz buried under a mound of rubble. Taz fatally wounded, crawling as far away as she could before collapsing and never getting up.

He could feel round three of the tears revving up, and he choked back as much of the emotion as he could.

'February,' he said, struggling to speak without giving in and collapsing into hysterics again, 'can ya do me a favour?'

'Sure,' said February, perking up. 'I like helping. It makes me feel smart- yaknow, useful.'

He held out the bandana. 'Can you tie this to my wrist? I'd do it myself, only…' he looked meaningfully down at his still barely-mobile robot side.

'Sure thing!' she took it from him and began looping it round his right arm.

'_No, STOP!_' Up shouted abruptly, and then softened his tone as his companion jumped back in alarm.

'I want it on the human side o'me,' he clarified.

She gave him an understanding look and moved it to his left wrist, wrapping it once, twice and then securing it with a tight knot.

'That looks pretty sturdy,' Up commented appreciatively, plucking gently at it.

She looked pleased. 'Thanks! I'm really good at accessories- if I didn't get into the starship rangers I was gonna be a fashion designer.'

'Good to know, February,' Up said, lacing the comment with a mixture of meanings, some sarcastic, some sincere. 'Good to know.'

She grinned at him and, despite the fact that he was decidedly and determinedly fixed in the height of depression, he couldn't help giving her a miniscule glimmer of a smile back.

They were quiet for another little while- a silence that was broken by Krayonder flinging the door wide open.

'Feb, dude, Specs and I are gonna go find Junior,' he said, not knowing or perhaps not caring that he had interrupted a rather sensitive moment. 'Just sayin', so ya don't come out here and wonder where we've gone.'

'Okay.'

Krayonder paused for a moment, glancing down at Up but not quite sure what he should do or say. He decided on a quick and casual _hey, man. _ Up raised his hand in response.

'Anywho, just to let you know.'

Krayonder disappeared, and then his head popped back round the door, turning back to the schience officer. 'Oh, and I'd stay away from Blim's workshop for a while. He's kinda mad, and if you go near him he chucks skittles atcha for some reason. And _man, _those bad boys really hurt!'

* * *

**I hope that ending wasn't too abrupt...also, I apologise for how depressing that was/may have been. I tried to put a few comic relief things throughout to lighten the mood, but...yeah. Anyway, next update coming as soon as I can wade through my huge uni workload. More of Taz next time, and who knows what else ;)**


	6. A lack of simple comforts

**Another chapter, dear friends.**

* * *

**July, 2312**

**A secret base**

**The night following the three days after the Apocalypse**

February had left him quite shortly after Krayonder's announcement, and as Up lay there the tiny hideout descended into silence. The strange, clattering noises coming from the other rooms, which Up assumed could be attributed to Doctor Blim throwing skittles at his door, eventually ceased, and Up found the unnatural quiet unnerving. He lay back on his bed again, wondering exactly what time it was, wondering just how long it had been since he'd eaten anything (not that he felt he could stomach much just at this moment in time), wondering what exactly had happened to Taz's body.

As he lay there, pondering and bemoaning this nightmarish existence he was reduced to, Up became aware of a small, clockwork-like sound coming from somewhere in the vicinity.

_Tick. Tick. Tick._

He craned his head, looking for the source- a clock, perhaps, or a dripping tap- before it dawned on him. It wasn't a clock. It was him. The mechanics inside his robot half- the cogs and gears and whatever else was running that side of him- were clicking away.

_Tick. Tick. Tick._

The rhythm was loathsome to Up- a just-audible reminder of what he'd become, but he listened to it anyway. The only other option was remembering that Taz was gone- and that was too painful for him to bear at the moment.

True, he'd wanted to wear her bandana as a reminder of her- but right now he needed time to get over the intense emotional pain of her loss. He wasn't quite ready to cope with it all at this stage.

He shifted his arm so he couldn't see it and lay, gazing at his robotic hand instead, listening to the mechanisms that partly drove his physical form working away.

_Tick. Tick. Tick._

* * *

**Robot Command Base, formerly G.L.E.E. Headquarters**

**Four days after the Apocalypse**

Coming up with a plan when you had had less than four hours' sleep in the last forty-eight hours was not exactly a walk in the park. They were practically running on empty- the food the robots occasionally provided gave little to no nourishment, water was scarce and despite their being given four hours a night to rest, these precious seconds had to be sent planning, and so Taz and Junior were in no fit shape to be conducting a daring escape. That didn't stop them, though. It couldn't.

Junior was downright determined they get out of the robots' grasp before anything worse happened- and Taz, well, her companion's hope was the only thing keeping her going. Junior may have deluded himself into thinking that somewhere out there her Up was alive- a notion she still couldn't quite bring herself to entertain- but she couldn't stop herself latching onto his strength of mind. It reminded her of the days when she was strong and stubborn- when she would have been filled with such frail shreds of hope and led her crew in a chase after them- when she cared enough to spearhead dangerous missions when she cared enough to spearhead dangerous missions where the odds were stacked against them- and come out triumphant. She liked the fact that, even if it wasn't her, someone was still battling for the sake of the human race- or at least for himself- and she wasn't going to leave him.

Being around Junior made her feel that there might still be a chance for…something. The only one of their little group who was not in danger of being broken by their appalling conditions was Tootsie. Neither lack of sleep nor food nor energy could douse his cheery disposition- and his optimism, although it could be beneficial to their escape plans, didn't half annoy Taz.

'Oh, I'm used to bein' sleepy and hungry!' Tootsie said quite loudly when he threw an absent-minded comment his way, 'you see, where I come from- Farm Planet- during the springy-time we have a harvest, and we get up real early to gather the crops an' pull the ploughs an'-'

'Shut up!' Taz had snapped, yanking him back toward his work just as a robot overseer trooped past with a whip. He really got on her nerves- no, more than that, he pissed her off completely. If anything was going to get them caught when they tried to break out- she figured it wasn't going to be their exhaustion.- it was going to be Tootsie's _boca grande._ Sometimes she found herself wishing they didn't have to bring him along- the tactless _idiota_ was likely to blab to the next robot who came along, not understanding the concept or secrecy- but then again, his sustained energy might come in handy. She had to admit- reluctantly, mind- that living your whole life on a farm and being used to inordinate amounts of manual labour seemed to come in handy. Tootsie just kept going, hefting heavy loads without much effort- without even having to wipe the smile off his face and stopping for breath. The guy was a _beast_.

And if there was going to be any lifting in this escape of theirs, or busting open doors or other means of exiting, they would most definitely need him. Neither Taz nor Junior could lift a makeshift battering ram, let alone actually use it.

Not that their plan was all that developed. The fatigue played havoc with them, and their muddled brains just couldn't seem to get together and suggest anything useful.

More than anything in the world, Taz just wanted to sleep. She wanted to soak herself in a bubble bath the way Up had liked to- tough son of a bitch that he was, even he had his secret weaknesses, and she'd known about all of them- and then collapse into a feather bed and not leave it for _days._

Just the thought of it made her heavy eyelids droop.

No. No. She couldn't. Rest was a luxury she couldn't afford right now. She needed to stay alert- well, as alert as she could manage- and think. And she couldn't let the robots see her slacking off- the fear of a chip similar to the one they had planted on Junior spurred her on. If they got chipped again, that was it. They were finished. Done for.

Taz fiddled with a cluster of wires with vigour- not knowing what she was doing but not wanting to look idle, and let her eyes drift around the room. So far, their attempts to map out the chamber had been fruitless- but then again they had only tried at night, shining the waning light of Tootsie's torch about and only making out shadows. Perhaps with all the lights on she could actually find something useful, if she tried.

The room looked strangely familiar to her- just little things seemed to trigger some faint spark of memory within her, the way the lights overhead hummed and flickered, the creak in the sliding door every time it opened. She could picture more furniture in here- she wasn't entirely sure why, and for reasons she couldn't explain, some part of her desperately wanted to go around to the other side of the huge structure that dominated the centre of the room, and get a look at the far wall.

Taz wished she knew what these flickers of recognition meant. If she'd been fully awake, she reasoned- or even just a little bit more awake- she could have figured this out instantly. They could have been out of here by now.

And then she kicked herself. She had to stop thinking like that. There was no use in lamenting over things she didn't have. She would have to make do with her situation and force herself to keep going, work this thing out.

_Get up, Taz. Get up and move jour ass round de device. Take a look at de wall. Do it!_

Her body took no notice.

_What are jou waitin' for? Do it now!_

She made a feeble attempt to rise from her crouching position, but her knees shook so violently she couldn't move more than a few inches before collapsing to the floor.

Oh, who was she kidding? She couldn't do this. She wasn't strong enough.

'Hey, Taz,' came a whisper, and Junior gently nudged her in the arm.

'What?' she mumbled.

'You okay?'

'Jeah, jeah.'

'Listen,' Junior shuffled closer 'til her mouth was practically in her ear. 'This is getting' us nowhere. We can't work on no sleep- heck, I'm findin' it hard enough to function without weed for this long!'

Taz turned to him, horridied. 'So what are jou sayin'?' she hissed. 'Jou wanna give up?' She felt a little like a hypocrite- she herself had been starting to think the same thing barely two seconds ago, but the thought of Junior throwing in the towel frightened her.

'No, I just thought- well, we could help each other out a bit.'

She frowned, uncomprehending.

'Seein' as there are two of us, we could work out some kinda shift thing…if you wanna sleep for a bit, I'll cover for you. You know, keep a lookout and wake you up if any robots start lookin' this way- then after a bit you do the same for me.;

Taz wanted to punch him for suggesting it. It wasn't fair- why was he tempting her with ideas like that when they had an important job to do?

'Jou t'ink I'm weak, Hunior?' she snarled. 'I can handle dis!' Even as she said it her bones screamed their disagreement.

'I don't think you're weak, Taz- I just don't think either of us are gonna come up with anything good when we can barely stay awake!'

Taz's struggle to keep herself from snatching at Junior's enticing offer was becoming more difficult with every passing second.

'It won' work,' she argued feebly. 'De robots'll see.' But already her head was slumping down toward his shoulder.

'Sure it will,' Junior said. 'Tell you what, do it like this.' He shifted the two of them so Taz was concealed in front of him. She blinked a little in surprise- she usually hated it when people touched her, but he went on before she could say anything.

'I'll stay behind you- it'll kinda keep ya outta sight, and you can sleep without 'em pickin' it up straight away.'

'Hunior, I just…' she couldn't even finish the protest this time- the cloud of exhaustion was already swamping its way over her, and all she could muster in the end was a 'thanks'.

Taz leaned forward, resting her head on her folded arms. In this position, she could hear with great magnification each and every clank as the other humans rattled away at their work, and she was uncomfortably squished up against Junior and could feel his heartbeat thumpity-thumping into her back, but she was so beat she couldn't care less about any of that. Her hot, red eyes shut themselves gratefully and Taz's last thoughts were of the oddly familiar room before she faded into a kind of semi-consciousness.

* * *

**A deserted street**

**Somewhere between a hideout and the robot base**

**Four days after the Apocalypse**

'How much longer, man? I mean, sheesh! How long do we have to keep doin' this?' Krayonder was walking in a slump, dangling arms being flung around as he clomped after Specs. They had gathered up a couple of torches and a few barely-working weapons they hoped Blim hadn't messed with too much, and had been out here searching their missing comrade since sunset the previous day.

And found nothing.

Not one sigh, not even a tiny trace that would yield a clue as to Junior's whereabouts. Krayonder was tired, he was starved-not to mention _bored- _and he was in a majorly bad mood. He'd even gotten so far as to vent his frustration out without considering the consequences, kicking big hunks of rubble so they skittered across the streets, and then swearing when his toe started throbbing as a result. Specs wasn't much better- not only was she extremely annoyed at Junior for taking off and making them have to come find him, instead of working out what their next move was, but her spectrometer still hadn't picked up a single reading. She'd been shaking and prodding it viciously for the last half-hour, calling it a stupid piece of junk.

Normally seeing the oh-so-organised Specs in such a rage would have made Krayonder laugh, but he was so peeved off with their whole situation that Specs's raging only worsened his own temper.

'Dude- just shut up about that dumb gadget! It's always been junk, even when it worked, so just…'

Specs's eyebrow twitched. 'What the hell do you mean 'it's always been junk'? Just because you're too much of an idiot to be able to use it…'

'Hey, listen, lady!' Krayonder snapped, 'nobody calls me an idiot! I might be unstable, maybe, but I am _not _stupid- I can read techno junk just as well as you!'

'Yeah? Well read_ this_, moron!'

And she chucked the spectrometer right at his head in a move reminiscent of Blim when making a candy pun.

Krayonder dodged, and the device flew past him, hitting the brick wall behind him with a horrible smashing noise.

Both Specs and Krayonder looked slowly down at it. The spectrometer crackled discouragingly, its screen shattered and little cogs and springs lying as far as five feet away.

Specs gazed at the remnants of her toy- a device she had crafted herself, taking hours and hours and days of precious time to do so, and then looked back at Krayonder, who gave her a shrug.

'_Look-what-you-did,'_ she said quietly.

Krayonder held up one finger to protest. 'Well, actually, uh, it wasn't me who threw-'

'Well, _thanks a lot, Krayonder!_' she suddenly exploded, going red in the face, her glasses practically steaming up in her fury. 'We've got no way of getting a reading on Junior, _or _any other survivors and supplies- or _robots_- they could sneak up on our hideout and we are probably gonna get caught and killed in our beds, and all thanks to _you!'_

'Me?' Krayonder shot back. 'Buddy, I'm not the one who just threw a temper tantrum! Yeesh, you're s'posed to be the rational one, and you're actin' worse than Blim when he's outta candy!'

'TAKE THAT BACK!' Specs yelled.

'No way, man!'

And then they were at each other, kicking and scratching and pummelling, brawling right there on the street, both of them not really understanding why they were fighting, but so wholly caught up in the moment that they kept on doing so anyway.

'Take that, jerk!'

'Shut up, Specs!'

'No, _you_ shut up, _Krayonder_!'

'_Both_ hu-mans will shut up.'

The third voice immediately snapped both rangers out of it. They turned, terrified, to face the intimidating seven foot-tall robot that was now staring down at them.

It took a step closer. They took a step back.

There was a pause.

And then…

'Fire!' shouted Specs in a very embarrassing voice, yanking the weapon she'd brought from her belt and wildly swinging it round to point at the robot. She pulled the trigger and prepared herself for the kickback as the gun released a round of laser beams- but no such beams appeared.

Instead, a strange, whirring noise started up, and a gust of warm air whooshed out the end and gently blew against the enemy's metal chest.

Specs cringed. If they survived this, she was going to kill Blim, make no mistake. What was the use of turning a perfectly functional weapon into a useless hairdryer? And during a robot Apocalypse? Where was the logic in that?

Taking his cue, Krayonder grabbed out his own weapon and took aim. A multi-coloured cluster of gumballs exploded from the gun, showering the robot but having no effect against its thick chrome armour.

'Dang!'

The robot lifted its foot, and for the smallest fraction of a millisecond, the two rangers both had the same desperate thought that maybe it would slip on the candy spheres and come crashing down. Krayonder actually crossed his fingers.

No such luck.

The great clodhopper crushed the gumballs into dust, not even slowed down for a second, and the enormous toaster kept on coming closer, reaching one hulking arm out and snatching up Specs by the ankle. She shrieked, one hand flying up to hold onto her glasses as she dangled upside-down from its grasp.

'Wooooah!' Krayonder yelled as the robot's free hand lunged for him, dragging him off the ground. Its head twisted round and it marched off in the direction it had come from, holding its two captives aloft.

Well, _that_ certainly didn't go to plan. Not only had they not found Junior, but they had fallen right into the hands of the enemy- who knew what would happen to them now?

'_Thanks_, Specs,' Krayonder muttered.

* * *

**A secret base**

Up didn't know how long he had slept, only that his stomach was rumbling louder than an engine. Robot or not, he'd give anything for something to eat right now. He stretched and pulled himself into a sitting position.

Right, he decided, if he wanted some food, he was going to have to go find it. He was going to have to prove he deserved to live- or at least be nourished enough to live a little while longer. With the kind of determination he would normally have applied to dangerous missions, he pushed against the bed with his human arm using the force of the springback to launch him into a standing position.

_Good_, he thought. _Not bad. I'm standin'._

With great difficulty, he lifted his right leg, heaved it forward half a foot or so and planted it down again. A little slow, a little cumbersome- but it was a start at least. The left one followed with ease, and then Up turned his attention back to his robot leg, manoeuvring it a bit further forward.

_Great. Fine. Ye'hre doin' it. An' it was a li'l quicker this time. Keep at it._

He was embarking on his third attempt when the door to his room flew open, smacking him right in the face.

The Commander let out a shout of surprise, stumbling back and raising his hand to his now throbbing forehead and nose.

'Oh. _Sorry_,' said Doctor Blim, sounding anything but. He flounced across the room, throwing himself down one of the empty beds and taking a decent-sized bite out of a giant Hershey's bar.

'I am never going to be happy again.' He said, chomping down on the chocolate.

Up just stared, unsure what he was supposed to say, He hadn't had much experience with Doctor Blim during his time in the G.L.E.E- he remembered once attending a meeting where the mad scientist had been there, and recalled being incredibly irritated that his only suggestions had been ones about poisoning the robots' oil supply with sour warheads, and hadn't actually contributed anything useful.

Up supposed it had probably been Blim's mad idea to turn him into a tin-can man- and this idea soured him even more toward the doctor. He didn't reply to him.

'I said,' Blim insisted, 'I am never going to be happy again!'

'Yeah,' Up muttered, 'I heard.' He shuffled back to his own bed and sat down.

'I am seriously contemplating suicide,' the doctor said dramatically. 'Yep, pop-rocks and cola, and then goodbye world!'

'Good luck,' Up mumbled. Blim narrowed his eyes.

'Don't you even want to know why?'

_Not really,_ Up thought, but he went along with it anyway. 'Why?'

'Because _nobody appreciates my genius!'_ Blim bellowed, throwing his hands up in the air. 'No-one appreciates the _hours_ I pour into my work, trying to make brilliant inventions that'll make life sweeter…' he was flicking the giant Hershey's bar about quite dangerously, almost losing it to the floor several times, and suddenly Up couldn't be bothered concentrating on the drivel Blim was spouting. His eyes, of their own accord, followed the chocolate as it swayed left and right.

'Uh…you gonna eat that?'

'All yours, sucker,' Blim said, flinging the bar. Up made a fumbling catch with one hand.

'Aren't you grateful at all?' he demanded.

'Oh. Yeah.' The Commander raised the Hershey's bar as if in a toast. 'Thanks.'

'NO!' Blim shouted, leaping to his feet. 'Not about that! I saved your life, you know- and not even a 'cheers, Doctor, you're a real swee tart' comes my way!'

Up, tired and unused to his mechanical side as he was, didn't have the reflexes to duck the projectiles that were then hurled in his direction, a little pink candy narrowly missing his eye.

'Why'd I be grateful about bein' a robot?' Up said. 'I've become everythin' I ever hated!'

'You _hate_ it? That took me hours-_ hours_ to put together!'

Blim was on the verge of tears- not that Up really cared all that much, but he didn't want a scene with this madman. He was trying to cope with his own grievances, without adding a candy-throwing psychopath into the mix.

'Well- I know you were doin' yer best,' he said grudgingly, and Blim retracted a little from his nervous breakdown, 'I know ya saved my life- it's just…a little hard to come ter terms with. I gotta get used ter this- and get my head around the fact that we lost the Robot Wars, and my Lieut….well, it's gonna take a while.'

Blim seemed to ponder this for a few moments. And then he gave a terrifying grin.

'I knew you loved my work! I knew you appreciated my genius! Ooh, nothing can stop me now! I've got ideas for _five_ new inventions, and I'm gonna finish 'em all!'

Up looked a little regretful. _What have I just done?_

'Commander Up, you have always been my _favourite_,' Blim announced, producing a large box of Cadbury Favourites and pressing them into Up's hands. 'Well, I can't stop to chat- I've got evil plans to make!'

And he disappeared.

Up stared down at the Favourites, deciding it was probably not in his best interests to ask Blim where he had been keeping a box that size. He swallowed his mouthful of Hershey's bar with a shudder. The sticky, sweet chocolate wasn't doing much for him- after so long without food it just gave him a sickly feeling in his stomach.

He flicked it away from him, suddenly unable to stand the sight and smell of it. He needed proper nourishment- and he needed to do something, even if it was just getting himself into the other room. With a sigh and a mighty heave, he got to his feet again.

_Well, robot_, Up thought, looking down at his right side, _let's see what you got._

* * *

**Robot Command Base, formerly G.L.E.E Headquarters**

Taz wouldn't describe her current condition as _well_ rested- but it had to be an improvement on this morning. She mimed working, occasionally stealing glances about the chamber. A few complications had cropped up she hadn't noticed before- a security camera positioned just above the door, and another a few feet away from where Tootsie was now whistling while he worked.

_Mierda_, she thought. That made things a little more difficult- when did the robots start paying attention to the footage?

They clearly hadn't seen her free Junior from their controlling chip, they hadn't noticed her and her companion taking turns to nap on duty, or so she hoped, but those were just little indiscretions, done secretly and quietly and not affecting much. It wasn't quite the same as if they tried to stage some miniature revolt, or…

And speaking of revolts, another thing niggling at Taz was that far wall. If only she could _see_ it, see what it was she was trying to remember, she felt they might actually be able to move one step ahead. She couldn't get up and go look, though- not when she was concealing a snoring Junior. The _cabr__ó__n_ still had twenty minutes left before he had to get up, or so his upside-down wristwatch said.

They'd agreed on three-hour shifts at a time, and it had worked okay so far, but the more Taz though about their plan (or lack thereof) the more restless she became. She'd more or less made up her mind to skip her next turn and get this over with. She looked down at Junior, still snoozing, and her impatient mind started tempting her to act. Smirking a little at her own idea, she thumped her elbow on Junior's back.

'Mmf.'

She thumped him harder this time. 'Hunior!'

Junior shot up, spluttering. 'Huh? What? Is a robot coming this way?'

'Uh…yeah,' Taz lied. 'Or dere _was_ anyway.'

Junior made a face as he moved back beside her and frantically scrabbled at the device. 'Dang!'

'Jou only had _veinte minutos_ left anyway.'

'I had _what_?'

Taz gave up and changed the subject. '_Mira,_ I need to get round to de other side of dis t'ing.' She kicked the partially built structure, trying not to think about what it might be used for when it was completed.

'How come?'

She kicked _him_ this time. 'It don' matter, _idiota, ¿vale?_ I'll tell jou later- I just need to do it!'

'Is this for the plan?'

'_No,_ Hunior, ees for kicks. _Claro- _of _course_ ees for de plan!' she cuffed him on the shoulder.

'Okay! Okay!' Junior said, and Taz shushed him in case he drew attention to them.

'Okay, I'm goin,' she cast a look around the room. The nearest robot overseer was about four feet away, with its metal back turned.

Quick as a flash, and drawing on her small new supply of energy, she got to her feet, extracted herself from the group and then pushed herself back in next to Tootsie Noodles.

'Hey, is this a new game?'

If Taz had a space-buck for every time she'd wished Tootsie had a volume control dial, she'd have been able to buy the whole Galactic League.

'Shh!' she hissed. 'Ees not a game. I'm doin' somet'ing important.'

'Oh! More SECRETS!'

Taz had to put her clawing hands behind her back to prevent an unfortunate accident involving them and Tootsie's neck.

'Sí, _idiota,_ secrets! Now shut up before we're sprung!'

With a final killer warning look, she parted from him, ducking and weaving her way round the group. Every time she moved, she became quicker, more fluid, able to get round more people at a time- that plan of Junior's must actually have worked a little, she thought. She felt just that little bit more ready for action, just a little more like she used to in the old days.

With another swift manoeuvre, Taz was there, close enough to the far wall that she could steal a couple of glances when the robots weren't looking her way. She craned her neck.

_Oh._

The answer was so odd, not quite what she would have expected (although what _had_ she been expecting? She wasn't sure) but now she saw it, it made perfect sense. Taz knew now why the creak in the sliding door was familiar- she was the one who'd damaged the mechanism a few years back in a fit of anger. She knew now why the lights flickered- she and some of her friends, as cadets, had performed a prank with the electrics that permanently affected this chamger and nearly got them kicked out the Academy.

The far wall confirmed it all in her mind- she was right about something being there. An enormous metal roller-door covered about half of it- one that she'd seen rolled up and down enough times.

This was- or had been, anyway- the Commanders' cafeteria. Many were the times Up had smuggled her in to eat with him, eventually not trying to hide her, as everyone pretty much accepted or overlooked the arrangement.

Taz bit her lip as the realisation hit her- they were in the G.L.E.E. Headquarters. They hadn't even left the damn G.L.E.E.!

She couldn't stop her shoulders shaking and her chest vibrating from her own silent, half-hysterical half-manic laughter. _They were in the damn G.L.E.E._

Those robots must be even stupider than they looked, Taz reasoned. She knew it was probably some sort of demoralisation- a deliberate way to get at the remaining humans by turning the Headquarters of the force against them into their own base, but the Lieutenant just couldn't help spotting the flaw in this.

They were starship rangers- or they had been- and they were in _their own damn Headquarters!_

Taz knew this place inside out- knew every passageway, corridor, room and air vent (thanks to some risqué escapades as a teenager). The robots, she was pretty sure, did not. They hadn't been here nearly long enough.

_Gracias, robots,_ she thought. _Jou've made our task a whole easier._

* * *

**Hope there weren't too many typos and things in that- I've been so tired lately. The next chapter probably won't come for a couple of weeks, I have eleven- no kidding, eleven- assignments/exams all one after the other. But anyway, when I return, more of their escape plan, and perhaps a twist or two, you never know...**


	7. Quick! Save the candy!

**It's been a long time since I updated, but I've had so much uni work it's not even funny. Just painful. And for the first time in a long time, I've actually managed to write a shorter chapter! Sort of. Hope you like, and I'm not too rusty. And I apologise for lame Three Stooges references and other things.**

* * *

**July, 2312**

**Robot Command Base, Formerly G.L.E.E. Headquarters**

**Six days and a night after the Apocalypse**

There was something about these two humans the robots didn't like. Perhaps it was the way they had still had enough strength and willpower to try and shoot when apprehended- a sign, perhaps, of some sort of human rebellion? They couldn't have that.

It had been decided, not long after they had been brought in, that these humans were unlikely to be of any use to their project.

The first few hours or so, the two had totally ignored their captors, instead leaping at each other with shouts of _thanks a lot, Specs, you dumbass, now look what's happened! _and _shut up, Krayonder, if you hadn't opened your tactless mouth we wouldn't be in this mess!_

Eventually, the two had had to be pried off of each other and thrown into different corners of their containment cell.

Megagirl stood against the wall, concentrating most of her battery power on hiding her boredom and appearing impassive. It had been two days, and she had scanned and examined both specimens 'til she could scan and examine no more. She knew the facts about them off by heart- the strange, frizzy-haired one's large Intelligence Quotient, the one with the ridiculous human hat's secret attraction to the woman, their ages, physical condition- and if she had to do one more check, she would probably snap and get angry. Which she could not afford to do.

The more advanced models, in all their superiority, had flaunted their ability to hypothesise, and were determined to prove that these two humans, although Megagirl could see no difference between them and anyone else, were involved in some sort of conspiracy to bring the robots down.

And, though she wouldn't say anything, she did not see the point in torturing the wretched things to find out the 'whereabouts of their base'. Like all the rest of the pathetic carbon-factories, they were probably just lucky to have scraped through this long without having died of starvation or worse. They were no threat- there was no need for talk of bombing their hideout to ensure no human revolution took place.

Or maybe that was just her emotions messing with her head. A few weeks ago, she would have agreed with the other robots. Her synthetic desire to kill all human scum would have led her to the same conclusion as the others- that these humans were a threat. But downloading all those feelings from the inter-web had probably screwed her up quite badly. She probably had all sorts of viruses by now.

Her eyes squeaked as she rolled them, and she turned and clanked out the room, leaving the others to elicit shouts of _I don't know anything about a secret base!_ and _what have you done with Junior?_

Megagirl took a walk down the corridors to 'clear her head', as the humans called it. She was in deep trouble. She didn't think she could keep this up for much longer. It had been a ridiculous idea to risk being decommissioned in order to think like the more superior droids did. Megagirl units were not supposed to be ambitious, they were not supposed to get ideas above their station. But for some reason, she had. There must be a glitch in her programming somewhere that made her want to defy everything she was designed for. To want to be more than another drone.

And there must be a massive, grade-A glitch in her programming to make her even look twice at a human. But every time she passed the chambers where he worked, she couldn't help but stop and stare at that one particular human.

She didn't even know why she was drawn to him. Of all the humans, robots or other sentient beings she had ever encountered, he was by far the most unintelligent, the most imbecilic, the most totally idiotic. If she were going to feel attracted to someone or something, it would be more logical to find some being with intelligence levels close to her own- after all, statistically speaking, that was how the humans did it…mostly.

Without realising what she was doing, she took two mechanical steps toward him. The man raised his curly head, and, on seeing the robot in his presence, his face broke out into a smile.

'Hi there, ma'am!'

'Silence, human,' came her automatic response.

'My name is Tootsie Noodles!' he was holding out a hand to her, and she suppressed the urge to release a mechanical laugh. Her sense of humour might be fairly newly minted, but she knew that even by human standards that was an incredibly stupid name.

'Gee, I sure am glad ya came down here!' the human with the pathetic name Tootsie Noodles went on. 'I saw-ed you from afar, and I thought to myself 'wow, she's shiny,' but I don't know much o' nothin' about talkin' to bea-ootiful girls, since I never dated a woman nor nothing!'

Megagirl debated where to begin correcting him on all the errors in that speech.

'But enough o' me,' Tootsie said, his goofy grin in place, 'what's your name, bea-utiful?'

'My name is irrelevant,' said Megagirl.

'Well hi there, Rele-elephant!' Tootsie took hold of her hand and shook it vigorously. 'Ain't that a purdy name!'

'My name is not 'Relevant', imbecilic human! I am a Megagirl unit, and we robots…'

'Well, damn, girl! Megagirl is an even purdier name! Why, where I come from, Farm Planet…'

Despite liking Tootsie's enthusiasm at everything to do with her, and being able to, for the first time, savour the feeling of being flattered, Megagirl forced herself to remain stony. 'Your mindless chatter is unimportant to me,' she cut him off. 'I am a robot, and I am here only to oversee you puny humans and ensure your work is done. I was not built for idle conversation.'

'Idols?' Out of that entire spiel, the only thing he'd picked up was one word. 'You mean like them wicker men that make the harvest grow?'

Megagirl didn't bother to respond. 'Get on with your work, slave.' She was being harsh, but she could see two other Megamen heading this way, and if she wasn't careful, that could be it for her. Decommissioning.

'Hey, uh, listen, I was wonderin'…' Tootsie was still going. She was going to have to kill him just to save herself. Fraternising with humans was absolutely, positively forbidden. 'Uh, maybe we could have, uh…a bit of a flirtatious relationship? Like maybe when this here shiny machine thingy's made, we could go on a date! Or, you know, when we all get out from this here place tomorrow mornin', we could go for a walk in the sun!'

Megagirl was halfway through rolling her eyes when something he said stuck in her transistors. _When we all get out from this here place tomorrow morning._

It could just be the rambling of a not-all-there Farm-Planet lunatic, but Megagirl's robotic, anti-human programming ran deep, and she couldn't help instantly suspecting treason. Humans were treacherous. It sounded like someone was plotting an escape.

'Explain the phrase 'get out from here',' she demanded.

Tootsie smiled shyly. 'Well, ma'am, I mean, Relephant, uh, Megagirl, me and a couple o' my buddies, uh, we're gonna go on a vay-kay-shun outta here soon! We've been makin' vay-kay plans for days, and it's gonna be fuuun!'

Megagirl's radar sensors detected two other humans frantically trying to shush him from behind her.

* * *

**July, 2312**

**A secret base somewhere**

**A week after the Apocalypse**

There was nothing worse than being cooped up in a tiny space, still trying to get used to your own body and living in fear that your mortal enemies might blow you to smithereens. Unless, of course, it was being cooped up in a tiny space, trying to get used to your own body and living in fear that your mortal enemies might blow you to smithereens, with a crazed, candy-obsessed scientist constantly on your back.

It had taken two whole days of effort, but Up was walking- actually properly walking, only a slight limp distinguishing his movements from those of any fully-human guy. He doubted he would be able to walk all that fast- run or crawl or anything, he was not yet agile enough to duck to the ground and had to be dragged down by one of his companions if they detected a robot somewhere in the vicinity, but he was mobile, and that had to be an improvement. He was on his way up.

At least, that's what he told February.

After a couple of days living with the schience officer, he'd realised it wasn't hard to deceive her. Honourable as her intentions were, kind as she tried to be when she talked to him and attempted to comfort him, February's primary concern was with her own appearance, and if she was absorbed in giving herself a manicure, filing her nails with a piece of scrap metal, she would accept quite quickly whatever he told her.

And so 'I feel like crap' became 'yeah, I'm gettin' better', Up stopped whining about his miserable condition to his friend and started doing all his moping in secret. It was something he'd learned to do during his time as a successful Commander- for the good of the others, never let your own feelings show. Of course, in the olden days, his own feelings had been things like annoyance at a friend, or distress at the damage done to a favourite zapper.

He got the feeling this sort of method wouldn't work here- not when he was so physically and emotionally damaged- that isolating himself and trying to pretend he was okay wouldn't work for long. But he did it anyway.

Screw getting better. He didn't deserve to live, but now he was, and couldn't- or wouldn't- work up the courage to change that situation- he could at least do his bit by not screwing up the others. They could still do something (although exactly what he wasn't sure) to help humanity, or at least themselves. And they deserved to be able to without having to worry about his dead weight.

So here he was now, in the front room, putting on a decent show of being able to take care of himself so Blim and February could get on with their own lives, eating soggy old cereal from the box and half-listening as his two companions prattled on to each other, unaware neither were interested in what the other had to say.

'And this is like, such a gross way to live, I mean, if I'd known we were gonna be invaded and have to hide in hiding, I would totally have packed! I can't shave my legs with a _dude's razor!' _February held up the dude's razor in question- one of the few luxury items Specs and Krayonder had been lucky enough to get their hands on while they were salvaging.

'Hey, where _are_ those other guys anyway?' Up thought aloud. He remembered there'd been a candy-ass who'd barged in on him and February the other day, and a frizzy-haired, bespectacled mechanic who'd been there to deliver the news that he was now a robot, but he hadn't seen them around for quite some time.

His question was completely ignored.

'When I've made enough brilliant weapons,' Blim said, tearing a redvine into strips, 'and we get rid of those robots, I think I'll elect myself Mayor of this city. I'd make a sweet leader- and everyone will worship me as their _Lifesaver…_you know,' he went on, when he realised neither of the others were laughing at the terrible joke, nor even acknowledging the pack of Lifesavers he was now crunching his way through, 'because I'll have _saved their lives?'_

Up sensed another strop was in the works.

'Hey, what happened to those other guys?' he tried again, if only to save Blim from having a tantrum.

'What other guys?' February flicked a strand of hair off her face. 'Oh, you mean Specs and Krayonder? They went to look for Junior.'

Up vaguely remembered Junior being mentioned a while back, but he couldn't remember precisely. 'When was this?'

February shrugged. 'About two days ago.'

'Two _days?'_ The Commander couldn't believe what he was hearing, nor that neither of his companions seemed even the slightest bit concerned that their friends had been missing for so long. When he'd been a proper, tough, human Commander, he certainly would never have been this lax. It just made him wonder, for the umpteenth time, why in the hell these idiots managed to survive the Robot Wars while so many sensible rangers had gone to their deaths.

Not that he was in any position to judge. He wasn't even a proper human.

'Well, shouldn't ya do somethin'?' he pushed. Blim just went on gnawing his way through a pack of pop tarts as if he hadn't heard.

February blew on her tacking fingernails. 'I guess they'll come back some time.'

'Don't ya care?'

February stood up, crossing over to the window and admiring herself in the glass in lieu of a mirror. 'Sure I care, but right now I gotta think about important things, like my hair, and this dumb nail polish that's wrecking my nails, and…a rocket!' she screamed suddenly.

Up blinked. 'What rocket?'

'THAT ROCKET!' the schientist squealed, pointing a manicured finger at the glass. Up craned his neck to take a look.

It wasn't a rocket, but it may as well have been for the way it made his insides feel like they were hurtling. He'd seen enough of these in his time to know that, if one came your way, you either got out fast, or you ended up dead.

It was a robot missile.

'GET DOWN!' Up roared, using all his human strength to leap from his spot and knock February away from the window. Landing in a heap on the floor, Up ignored the girl's shrieks of protest and continued to heave her out the way.

'Blim!' he yelled. The Doctor was frantically trying to stuff a stack of sweets into his pockets.

'Quick! The candy! Ahh! Ooh! What do I save? What do I save?' he was crying, frantically rummaging through chocolate bars and packets of sugar babies. 'Kitkats- I need a break- oh, but the Paydays are my favourites…'

'GET DOWN!' Up shouted again, but before he could reach him, the missile smashed through the window, there was a tremendous crash and the whole hideout was enveloped in a cloud of smoke and rubble.

* * *

**Different Place, Same Time**

Taz wanted to murder Tootsie Noodles. Slowly, brutally and painfully. Adding in extra gore. After all the time they'd spent planning this, the hours and days plotting, little flickers of hope flaring up in her as they did, and all for _nothing._ All for Tootsie Noodles, the biggest _idiota_ she had ever met in her whole life (and she'd met a fair few on her travels, that was for sure) had just gone and blabbed their plan _to a robot._

They'd been doing so well, too. Discovering that they were still inside the G.L.E.E. Headquarters had been the biggest blessing they could hope for. Junior, being the son of the boss, knew the security systems inside out, and was able to convey useful little titbits of information to his companions, such as when the security cameras came on, which bits of the electric fence surrounding the Headquarters were fake and which were real, and for the past two nights they had been putting their operation together.

They'd had it all figured out. The robots' supervision was at its worst around the middle of the day, when they changed shifts, and the way the door was angled meant that for about four seconds, there was a small section of the room the tin cans couldn't see. If, in those four seconds they could run up to the roller door that had once been part of the Commanders' cafeteria. Taz's own knowledge of this room kicked in here- many were the times she'd sneaked in here to hang out with Up, and she knew that on both sides there were metal chains which controlled the roller-door manually, in case of fire and the need for a hasty exit. From then on, if they could pull it, slide through and get into the kitchens all in the span of maybe ten seconds, or before the robots started shooting, there were several different air vents which led all around the building. From then on, they would just have to pray like mad they could be quick enough, clever enough, careful enough when making snap decisions, and just maybe they could make it out. Provided there were no major screw ups.

It was incredibly risky- but the shred of the old, valiant Taz that remained liked it. It reminded her of the old days, the glorious days when she and Up, with less of a plan than they had now, would go roaring into battle, with a thin chance of success on their side and a hell of a lot of adrenaline. The rest of Taz wasn't so sure- but, as she reminded herself, whether she'd given up or not, Junior still had hope, and that was reason enough to bust him, herself and the _tonto_ Farm Planet hick that they couldn't shake off out of this place.

Which they could have done, until the Farm Planet hick had opened his fat mouth to a Megagirl unit. Both Taz and Junior looked up from their work, mouths open in horror as Tootsie not only put his foot in it, but his whole leg- telling her about their plans to escape and inviting her_- _actually_ inviting her- _along!

Both of their brains kicked in at the same time, and, from across the room, they waved their hands at him manically, desperately trying to get him to _shut up._

The word _idiota_ was going round Taz's thoughts on a loop, getting louder and louder as he continued to ignore her and blithely relate to Megagirl the details of their plot. She stopped merely waving to Tootsie and began to violently, silently mouth off to him, silently screaming in both Spanish and English for him to stop it, hoping that maybe, for once in his life, Tootsie Noodles might do the impossible and stop being tactless.

No such luck.

She heard the words 'my buddies right there, right over there,' come from the farmer's mouth, and then the shiny, white-haired head of the Ultrabeam Megagirl unit had swivelled round to meet her eye.

Taz was frozen to the spot. She'd gazed upon robots before, but since the end of the war and her capture she'd made very certain to avoid looking them in the eyes, to avoid that direct contact which would bring back all her memories of Up's death. She saw in the metal _perra_ the same synthetic rage and hatred that had driven Optimus Prime to take a buzz-saw to Up, _oh, Up, why_, she saw the same cold soullessness that had ruined her _quinceañera, _killed everyone that meant anything to her, destroyed her life and nearly her whole species. And she wasn't tough enough anymore to stare the toaster down.  
They stayed like that for several moments, human eye locked with mechanical, and then Megagirl broke the stare, raising her head to the ceiling, opening her mouth and making a horrible, screechy dial-up noise.

'Message to superiors,' her metallic voice bleated out, 'report of human revolt. Send backup immediately.'

The words snapped Taz out of her terrified state. That was it, they were done for. No chance of getting out now- they were going to be shot, or chipped, or worse.

'Taz, what the hell are we gonna do?' Junior hissed from beside her.

She turned to look at him, and then an idea lodged itself in her mind.

'We're gonna have to go for it now.'

Already Megagirl was turning to advance, the other robot sentries leaving their posts to cluster around. They had maybe a moment to act.

'Are you crazy, Taz?'

'Look, de _estúpido _yokel blew de whole t'ing- if we don' go now, dat is it! No more chances!'

Junior glanced from her to Tootsie, who was watching Megagirl with adoration and completely ignoring them.

'We just have to leave him- now _come on!_'

'But…'

'_Mirame_!' Taz hissed. 'If we're gonna go, we gotta go now! _Vamos!_'

Junior still looked torn.

The robots were almost upon them now.

Taz let out a furious growl, grabbed Junior's hand and dived for the far wall.

* * *

**Haha, you can tell I'm getting bored of writing dates and times before each segment. Anyhow, I've been mean and ended the chapter right in the thick of the action. Hope you can put up with me until the next one, which should come sometime this week, and contain the actual escape itself, and the fate of the people who got bombed. 'Til then XX**


	8. Your pants are on fire

**Well, I've finally gotten up to the escape itself, and I hope it's believable. Some other stuff is going to happen too. Hope you like.**

* * *

**July, 2312**

**The same day, time and place as the last time, because we happen to be picking up where we left off and the author is too lazy to write out the date again, even though she has just wasted time writing out this long rant instead, which is rather silly, don't you think?**

Taz's heart had somehow found its way to her ears. It pounded right into her head, adrenaline running through her she hadn't thought she'd ever feel again, as she and Junior darted across the room. Everything happened so fast she was barely aware of each separate incident, every moment blurring together into one hurtling mass which moved forward with the momentum of a crashing plane. She wasn't even thinking in words, just in mental images of what she had to do next.

The second she and Junior had moved, a round of shots had descended on them from the four robots in the room, and suddenly they were dodging and ducking like they were doing some of the weirdest modern dance moves known to man. Taz noticed, from the corner of her eye, that the rest of the humans were just staring, slack-jawed as the two of them tried to make their escape. She tried not to focus on demanding to herself what was wrong with them, and instead continued to move, lunging for the chain and yanking on it.

The shots continued to rain down, zipping past her ears, grazing her arms.

Megagirl's hand retracted to reveal a protruding gun, and then she was firing, and Taz felt something ferociously hot and sharp dive into her back, just under her shoulderblade, a second laser beam hissing into her upper right arm at exactly the same moment.

She let out a strange, strangled gasp, forcing herself to keep going through the pain barrier, force her arm to keep working regardless, and gave the chain one more final pull.

The roller-door was now open maybe two feet, maybe a little less, leaving just enough space for them to squeeze under. Taz and Junior made a leap for it, scrambling over the counter and sliding, sucking in their breaths to try and force themselves to fit.

As this happened, the Lieutenant became aware of something else- some part of her frantically active consciousness had been pondering how fortunate they were not to have been killed yet. Despite how rushed both their actions were, Taz and Junior were taking longer than they'd planned to get this done- and they had the added disadvantage of having lost their element of surprise.

'Wow, Megagirl, you sure can fire!' came a voice from behind them that could only belong to Tootsie, Taz looked up at the same second and then it clicked- they weren't dead because the robots weren't shooting directly at them anymore. They were shooting at the chain, trying to break the mechanism.

'Hurry it up!' the Hispanic girl managed to shriek, but whether her garble was understood by her companion or not, Junior picked up the pace, rolling out the other side of the now closing door and yanking Taz after him by one arm.

Taz shrieked, inwardly cursing herself for acting so weak. 'Will jou be _careful,_ jou _chico est__ú__pido!_ Dat's my injured arm!'

The roller-door shuddered and slammed shut, and the two former rangers collapsed on the other side of the counter, panting and dusting themselves off.

'Yeesh, _sorry_,'Junior muttered. He hopped off the counter and looked around the deserted kitchen. 'Now what?'

They could still hear the metallic shouts of the robots on the other side of the wall, as well as grating sirens and hundreds of clomping footsteps as a whole legion of the tin creeps rushed in to assist.

Taz made her way through the room, rubbing her wounded arm and trying to put aside her fond memories of the place for now. She couldn't afford to think about all the happy times she'd sneaked through here to see Up- not right now. Her whole brain needed to be completely concentrated upon getting the two of them the hell out of here. Now where was that damned air vent? She knew it was around here somewhere…

A squealing sawing noise began to sound, setting their teeth on edge and increasing in volume, and Taz shuddered as she continued her search.

_Where de…aha!_

'Hunior! Over here!'

'Taz,' her friend (she supposed the title would do for now, though she didn't bestow it lightly, or often when she was her usual self) was quaking, his voice trembling. 'They're sawin' through the door! I don't know how they're doin' it, but they're sawin' through it!'

She glanced back long enough to see that he was right- the horrible noise was coming from the rotating saw that glowed red, half-melting, half cutting away the cafeteria's roller-door in a shower of sparks and metal shavings. Any second now and they'd be dog meat, or rather robot meat.

She sprinted back across the room, ignoring the agony that wracked her arm as she wrenched Junior towards her.

'Get in de vent- now!'

The air vent sat just above one of the stoves, the grill dilapidated and easily removed, thanks to Taz's adolescent antics. They clambered up onto the oven, Junior reaching up and tugging it free. The sawing was getting louder, large chunks now flying, and already robot guns were beginning to poke through, stray shots whizzing through the room and clanging off pots and pans.

'Get in, Hunior!' Taz shouted again, and Junior didn't wait to be told a third time. Junior jumped, grabbing hold of the edge of the opening with both hands and hoisting himself up, his feet seeking out Taz's shoulders and using them to push off from.

'Oi! Hey! Watch what jou're doin', _idiota!'_

Another laser beam flew through the air towards them, narrowly missing taking Taz's ear off. She cussed impatiently at Space-Claw's son, only stopping when he reached down and helped her up. Taz gripped hold of his arm, ignoring his cried of _hey, you're gonna dislocate my shoulder, _scrabbling at the opening and trying to climb up without a foothold.

'Help me, c_abr__ó__n!'_ She was half-into the opening now, the edge of the vent pressing painfully just under her ribs, her legs still dangling. She kicked them, trying to pull herself fully in, but the torn hem of her fatigues was caught. One more violent tug and she should be free…

Her boot connected with something, there was a click, and Taz realised with horror as a jet of flame rumbled into life that she had just flicked the switch to turn the stove tops on.

She really wanted to swear at someone, but she wasn't quite sure who. Why couldn't anything ever just go to plan?! Now she was going to have burns to cope with.

Another few furious shouts, some very close shots and Taz was inside the vent, every muscle aching, several new splodgy bruises adorning her skin, some in the same spots where old ones had just started to heal, and now probably some third degree burns to add to this list of calamities. She slumped against the wall of the vent, exhaling, needing a few moments before she could gather herself and go on.

'You okay?'

'Sure,' she rolled her eyes. '_Muy bien,_ I mean, I've been shot and grazed and burned half to death, ees just_ fantastic_.' She tutted.

'Uh, Taz?' Junior bit his lip. 'Your pants are on fire.'

Taz leapt up, hitting her head against the roof of the air vent and swatting at the hem of her fatigues, which was indeed smouldering. 'Are jou gonna just sit dere, idiota? Put it out!'

It took both of them to bat out the last traces of fire, and they watched the ends of the fabric curl and wizen before Taz tore them off ferociously, leaving herself with a few inches of exposed calf, some of the skin blistering.

_'¡Que lío!'_ she muttered to herself.

They waited a few more moments, catching their breath, and then they noticed the clanking coming from somewhere below them, and realised if they didn't get a shuffle on, all the pain and adrenaline and horror they had just been through would all be for nothing.

'Well,' Junior said, 'you're the one who bust into all the G.L.E.E. air conditioners as a kid. You lead the way.'

If Taz hadn't been focussing every ounce of her that wasn't despair on getting them out of the Headquarters, she would have had room for a bit of anger and annoyance at this remark. A Lieutenant of her standard- well, the standard she used to be at, before she almost completely stopped existing and became a wispy sort of half-a-Taz, wouldn't put up with lip like that for a minute. But she wasn't a Lieutenant any more- not if there was nothing for her to be a Lieutenant of, and they were in rather a hurry to get out before the robots figured out where they were and started attacking the air vents, so she settled for just a quick, sharp glare.

She squinted down the shaft. There was a fork about thirty yards ahead- one of the vents, she knew, led towards the cadets' quarters- but she sure as hell wasn't going to go that way. If the robots had humans enslaved and working on some sort of doomsday device slash rocket ship in the cafeteria, who knew what they were doing in the other parts of the Headquarters?

And the other one, she remembered with a sinking heart, did indeed lead out of the G.L.E.E. Building- but it wasn't going to be a pleasant trip.

'Hunior,' she said, sighing, 'how d'jou feel about getting' dirty? _¿A t__í__ te gusta?'_

Junior blinked. 'Huh?'

'De passage we're gonna hafta take…'

'It does get us outta here, right?' he interjected.

'_S__í__- _but we're gonna end up in de dumpsters.'

Junior wrinkled his nose. 'You sure there's no other way? I'm the boss's son- I'm not used to playing dirty.'

'Jou wanna go back dere and get cut into leetle pieces by de robots?'

'Right behind you,' Junior grumbled, and together they set off, crawling deeper into the shaft.

Taz kept her eyes ahead of her, trying to shuffle quickly and quietly, so as not to alert any of the robots searching for them to their presence here. Her arm and upper back still hurt like crazy, not to mention the stinging sensation shooting up her leg- but they had to come last on her list of priorities right now. She could worry about dressing wounds _after_ they got out of immediate danger.

'Boy,' came a muffled groan from behind her, 'what I wouldn't give for a smoke right about now.'

* * *

**July, 2312**

**A pile of rubble**

**One week after the Apocalypse**

Up had the sensation that he was asleep. It was a sort of pleasant feeling, a happy, heavy feeling, and he couldn't feel his robot limbs zapping away, nor any other part of him for that matter. He shut his eyes, quite content to relax into this feeling, until the ringing stopped in his ears, his thoughts came flooding back, the shock began to fade and he realised what had happened. He wasn't asleep. He was quite possibly dead.

He tried to lift his head, and as he continued to slowly adjust, the smell of charred rubble filled his nostrils, and thick dust filled his lungs, causing him to retch. He wasn't dead. Damn it, he wasn't that lucky. He was still there, trapped in the remains of the closest thing to a home he had in this horrible, post-Robot world.

Ugh. He had a good mind to just shut his eyes again and wait there until he did die. No harm in that. The red bandana tied tight around his wrist was a constant reminder that Taz was dead, and that alone was enough to warrant lying there 'til death took him. Not to mention the destruction of the human race, and the fact that he, despite his best efforts to get used to it, couldn't come to terms with the idea of being a hodgepodge of droid spare parts. What was the point in going on? Why would he bother to-

The Commander suddenly sat bolt upright, thunking his head on a fallen beam but hardly noticing. What was wrong with him? There _was_ a point in him going on- there were two points, in fact, shaped like a ditzy blonde schience officer and a crazy, blue-haired mad doctor. He had two friends somewhere in this mess.

So many people he cared about had died of late- and while two more shouldn't make much of a difference, shouldn't have much more of an effect on him, the idea that the last two friends he had in the world might have snuffed it was more than he could bear.

He carefully climbed from the pile of rubble coughing dust out of his mouth and clearing his throat.

'February!' he yelled. His voice echoed down the empty street. Those damn killer robots could probably hear, but he couldn't care less. 'Blim!'

No response from either. He stretched his limbs, ran his hands through his hair, checked his ribs, assessing himself. He didn't seem overly damaged, mercifully. He could only hope the others were okay too.

He called again. 'Blim! February! Answer me, dammit!'

'Ew, there's ash in my hair!' a voice rasped to his left, and Up sprang into action, shovelling through the debris with his hands at breakneck speed.

'February! Stay there! I'm comin' ter get you!' A stupid thing to say- if she happened to be trapped under something, she would hardly have the option not to stay put.

'Over here!'

He pushed his way through the mess to the source of the voice, grabbing the filthy, shrieking creature that had attracted his attention by the arms and dragging her from the pile. February collapsed beside him, coughing and spluttering, trying in vain to wipe some of the dust and soot off her clothes.

Up almost fainted with relief. Forcing his robot arm to bend, he wrapped it around her. 'You okay?'

She looked down at herself. 'Think so…I'm so dirty though- and now the hideout's bombed how am I gonna shower?'

Up rolled his eyes. Out of everything that could have happened, she had to worry about the shower. It almost made him want to laugh, but he couldn't think of doing anything of the kind until he'd found the third member of their party.

'Blim?' he called again. _'Blim!'_

A few feet away, a heap of bits of wood that had once been a table and two chairs slid away, and Blim's head slowly emerged, his powder blue coiffure ruined and sticking everywhere. 'I've got _all sorts_ of problems,' he moaned, somehow, despite his miserable state, managing to fish out some liquorice allsorts and half-heartedly flick them towards the others.

Up and February struggled to their feet and lumbered over to him, hastening to free him.

They pulled him out with great difficulty, both of them unable to stifle gasps as his left foot came into view, all but completely crushed.

'Ew!' the schience officer cried.

'How bad's the damage?' Up demanded.

'Terrible- all my candy canes have shattered- and _just look at my pop tarts!' _He pulled out one, then another squashed packet of treats and slammed them to the ground.

'And…your _foot_?' Up asked impatiently.

'Oh, don't _talk_ to me about my foot! All that blood has completely ruined the skittles I had in my shoes! Inedible!'

The Commander looked sideways at February. 'I think we'd better get him some help.'

* * *

**An air duct**

**Somewhere above the former G.L.E.E. Headquarters**

**The same number of days after the Apocalypse, because another night had not yet fallen**

'I still feel like crap about Tootsie.'

They had crawled steadily for about ten minutes, reaching about the halfway mark, and Taz couldn't take any more without at least a short rest. If she had to drag her arm for much longer, she thought it might fall off. She tutted in Junior's direction and went on nursing it, breathing slowly through her teeth.

'I feel more dan dat, Hunior. If I ever see dat creep again, I will tear him a new…'

'No, no. I feel like crap about leavin' him behind.'

Taz gave him a withering look. 'De great _idiota_ nearly got us killed! It was now or never, Hunior, if we di'n go when we did, we'd have had our guts eaten by now!' She exhaled viciously. 'Dere's not'ing we can do about him now.'

Junior still looked sceptical, but Taz was beyond caring. There was only one thing she was allowing to hold her attention now, and that was saving the two of them from immediate danger, and finding a way out onto the streets. Nothing else mattered. She wasn't planning ahead, she wasn't looking behind. If her pathetic existence could still contend with one tiny purpose at a time, she might be able to get through it- and this hurdle was big enough for now.

'Not far now. Our way out _est__á__ todo recto de aqu__í__,_ we just gotta keep goin' dis way.'

'You know, I can only pick up half the sentence when you switch languages on me like that…'

'Oh, shut up.'

Junior frowned, looking with concern at her arm. 'How're your injuries holdin' up?'

'I'll worry about dat later.'

'But shouldn't you…'

'Do jou see a doctor?' she gestured impatiently to the metal tunnel around them. 'I can't do anyt'ing now! Come on, we'd better get goin' again, before…'

Before exactly what happened next could happen- except it did, so Taz's speech came just a little too late. The floor a few feet in front of them suddenly fell away with a clang, and the sinister, glowing-eyed head of a robot slowly began to rise up from the gap.

Junior screamed girlishly. Taz jumped in shock, banging her head on the roof of the duct for the second time that day.

'Hu-mans located,' the robot announced, its voice reverberating off the walls of the enclosed space.

And Taz acted on the first thought that came into her head- if it could even be called a thought. She went straight for the robot's head, letting out a strange cry, aiming to slam her whole self into it with all the strength she had. The head descended before impact, and Taz's hands-and-knees jump projected her over the gap in the vent floor and to the other side. A metal claw replaced the head, snatching and grabbing through the air at random, and the Hispanic girl beckoned violently for Junior to manoeuvre himself around it and join her.

The two of them shuffled at a painful speed, trying to ignoring the protests of their knees and of Taz's wounds. A loud thump behind them signified the robots entering the shaft, and they forced themselves onwards- they couldn't afford to let the tin cans gain on them…

The duct suddenly took a sharp vertical drop, and the two escapees tumbled forwards, falling over each other and obtaining several bruises as they hurtled toward their destination.

Taz's stomach was starting to turn, but this feeling wasn't altogether terrible to her- it brought with it a sense of familiarity- she'd done this before, she just had to remember that there was no grill on the other end, and they'd have to start slowing down soon, or…

Taz turned herself around, trying to get her bearings and digging her heels in, spreading her arms wide to wedge herself in the space and come to a stop.

'Hunior!' she called to her companion, who had somehow gotten ahead of her during their fall, 'hold on!'

'Whaaat?'

'Hold-on!' she shouted again, but even as she did so, Junior went flying off out the end of the vent.

Taz swore under her breath. It was impossible to conduct a successful escape when you had to work with other people. If she'd been doing this on her own, she would have been out of here by now, she thought, fine and without injury and without having to worry about stupid amateurs getting themselves into trouble. Or at least the old Taz would have been able to, anyway. Tutting, she crawled forward and glanced over the edge.

'Aww, ew! Why me?' came Junior's cry from directly below her.

Just as she'd predicted. She remembered from her days as a cadet that the dumpsters had been placed just below the one air vent without a grill or a filter, and that on hot days, the smell of the garbage had come through the air conditioning into their training centre and just about poisoned them all. She also recalled quite vividly the first few times she'd tried to use the ducts to sneak about the Headquarters coming down this way, looking down and nearly throwing up. It was a terrible way to have to exit the building, but she figured if she could try and drop down carefully, land on the edge of one of the large skips, she could leave the dumpsters relatively unscathed.

But Junior, the dumbass, had to fly straight into the trash.

Taz shuffled forward, trying to place her feet. This wasn't as easy as she'd first thought- the only way out of this mess unscathed seemed to be to try and land on one of the moulding cardboard boxes that skimmed the top of the dumpsters.

She shot a contemptuous glance at Junior, now swimming through garbage-water to get to the edge.

'Yeesh, Taz, wasn't there another way out- one that _didn't_ involve totally humiliating me?'

'Toughen up, Hunior. We're not outta de woods yet!'

Climbing out, Taz dry and clean apart from her boots, Junior sodden and disgusting, the two rangers clomped over to the wire fence, struggling under it.

The city lay before them, smouldering, destroyed. It took a few seconds before Taz could take it in. The whole thing seemed a bit like a hallucination or a dream, some mirage that wasn't real, that couldn't be real, just a blur of smoke and images she didn't believe at all.

It was only after Junior coughed that her brain returned and it hit her that she'd better keep moving- that it was a miracle they hadn't been apprehended as soon as they left the building, that there were probably robots behind them somewhere, right on their tail. She forced her shaky legs onward, and they staggered round a corner, up an alley, round another corner and onto the main road.

Taz and Junior stood before the wreckage of the streets, staring out over the expanse of rubble and dilapidated buildings. It was the first time the Hispanic girl had seen the full extent of the robots' damage, and the sight of it made her sick to her core. This had once been home- well, the thing closest to her home anyway. These had been the streets she and Up had walked down on days off, taking in the sun and chatting companionably about training sessions, movies and how hilariously pathetic the new recruits always were when they went to their first sparring match.

Even now, even through all the destruction and remnants of chaos and terror, she could still see the same path she always used to take, could almost envision silhouetted versions of herself and Up, laughing and pretending to hit each other as they made their way down it. She couldn't exactly say whether this image filled her with despair or hope. It just filled her with…something.

She still wasn't sure she believed Junior about Up being out there. She didn't know what she'd find, or whether she had the courage to go find it. She still didn't think she was really Taz- not the way she had been.

But she looked at Junior, squared her shoulders and cleared her throat.

'Okay, Hunior,' she said, her voice slowly creeping back to that authoritative tone of her Lieutenant days of old. 'Let's go find Up.'

He reached to take hold of her hand, and she shook it off. 'Don' touch me. Jou reek.'

* * *

**I hope their escape didn't seem too...abrupt, but I needed Taz and Junior out of there so the actual plot can start happening. Up is out there somewhere. Taz is out there somewhere. Are they going to reunite? You'll see, soon enough.**


End file.
